Who Rules Cincinnati?
A Study of Cincinnati’s Economic Power Structure
And its Impact on Communities and People
By
Dan La Botz
Cincinnati Studies
www.CincinnatiStudies.org
Published by Cincinnati Studies
www.CincinnatiStudies.org
Copyright
©2008 by Dan La Botz
Table of Contents
Summary......................................................................................................... 1
Preface.............................................................................................................4
Introduction.................................................................................................... 7
Part I - Corporate Power in Cincinnati.........................................................15
Part II - Corporate Power in the Media and Politics.....................................44
Part III - Corporate Power, Social Classes, and Communities......................55
Part IV - Cincinnati: One Hundred Years of Corporate Power.....................69
Discussion..................................................................................................... 85
Bibliography.................................................................................................. 91
Acknowledgments.........................................................................................96
About the Author...........................................................................................97
Summary
This investigation into Cincinnati’s power structure finds that a handful of national and
multinational corporations dominate the economic, social and cultural life of the city. Wealthy
individuals who own, manage and sit on the boards of these companies play an inordinate role
in the social institutions and the political life of Cincinnati. Decades of corporate control have
led to a distorted development and to grotesque contrasts between rich and poor like those
we associate with Third World countries. This distorted development has had a particularly
damaging impact on the African American population.
The principal findings are:
• Seven corporations, by virtue of their enormous wealth and power, dominate the
economic and social life of Cincinnati – 1) Procter & Gamble; 2) Kroger, 3) Macy’s/
Federated Department Stores/; 4) Fifth Third Bancorp, 5) Western and Southern
Financial, 6) American Financial Corp, and, 7) E.W. Scripps. They can be said to rule
Cincinnati and among them, Procter & Gamble plays the predominant role.
• In Cincinnati the seven dominant corporations and some other companies guide all
the important civic, cultural, and social organizations of the city. They influence or
control the boards of directors of foundations, universities, museums, and social welfare
organizations. They sit on boards while community members and working people are
virtually excluded from participation. Middle class and working class people have almost
no role in these organizations or at best have token representation.
• Cincinnati corporations and wealthy families play an inordinate role in financing and
shaping local politics. Corporate Political Action Committees or PACs, such as the
P&G PAC, and corporate families loom large in local, regional and state politics. The
Lindner family (American Financial Group) and the Pepper family (Procter & Gamble)
make large financial contributions to political candidates and ballot issues. These firms
and families contribute significant funding to local Republican, Democratic, and Charter
candidates in order to shape the city’s government and the educational and judicial
systems.
• To achieve their goals, Cincinnati corporations have created a series of private
organizations—CBC, DCI, 3CDC—which have usurped democratic control from
the city council, from city agencies and from the public. Creation of the “strong mayor,”
abolition of the planning department, and handing over public planning functions to
private organizations have all worked to the detriment of public discussion, debate and
democratic control.
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• Control of the city’s economic and political life for profits and the accumulation of
corporate wealth and property has made Cincinnati the third poorest mid-sized city
in the United States. Social and economic indicators in areas of unemployment, health
care, segregation and education reflect devastation from corporate priorities. Cincinnati’s
middle class and working class neighborhoods have declined while corporations focused
on downtown development. The inevitable growth of crime out of poverty further
degrades the lives of all working people in Cincinnati while also imposing the heavy costs
of the police and judicial apparatus.
• Corporate control of Cincinnati’s economic and political life has preserved and
sometimes deepened patterns of racial segregation, discrimination and outright
racism. The focus on downtown development and emphasis on expensive entertainment
and luxury consumption, redefining the city in terms of the interests of white suburban
visitors, and creation of a climate of fear of African Americans have all worked to the
detriment of the city’s black population.
Recommendations
Corporate control has dangerously corrupt Cincinnati’s economic development, political ideals,
and social welfare. If this situation is to be remedied, a number of steps must be taken.
1. Cincinnati’s working class and middle class populations need to organize, unite, and
speak out in order to take power from the corporations and change the city’s priorities.
2. A change in the balance of power must occur. Labor unions, African American
organizations, and neighborhood groups must play a large role in the life of this city if we
are to shift priorities from corporate profits to economic and social justice.
3. Cincinnati’s priorities need to change from development that favors narrow corporate
objectives to development that strengthens neighborhoods, creates industrial, technical
and service jobs with high wages, and that favors a green, sustainable economy.
4. Cincinnati—and the rest of America—needs once and for all to address the legacy
of racial discrimination toward African Americans and further, create a welcoming
environment for today’s immigrants from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin
America. Discrimination of all sorts—whether against blacks, Latinos or Arabs or against
women, lesbians or gays—must be banished from our society.
5. Cincinnati needs political and social leaders who see criminal justice not in terms of
police and jails, but instead who will focus their energies on eradicating the causes of
criminality by ending economic and social injustice in our city.
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This report has been researched and written with the hope of contributing to discussion and
debate about Cincinnati and our future and encouraging citizens to take action. (The author
offers a contribution to that discussion in the section at the end of this document titled
“Discussion.”) The hope for the future of Cincinnati lies not with those on the top who now rule
it, but with the majority of the city’s middle and working class people who in a democracy have,
if they organize, the numbers, the power, and the votes to decide the city’s fate.
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Preface
This study is written in the spirit and tradition (though not pretending to measure up to the
literary quality or political acuity) of books such as C. Wright Mills’ The Power Elite (1956),
E. Digby Baltzell’s An American Business Aristocracy (1962), G. William Domhoff ’s Who Rules
America? (1967), and Ferdinand Lundberg’s The Rich and the Super Rich: A Study in the Power of
Money Today (1968). More recently historians Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle returned to this
theme in their book Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy (2005).
These studies, most of them published forty or fifty years ago, demonstrated how wealthy
individuals and corporations dominated not only the American economy but also society and
politics. While we like to think of ourselves as a democracy, those studies suggested that we
are in reality what nineteenth century social critics called a plutocracy, a nation ruled by the
rich. Since then, the very wealthy and the corporations have only gotten stronger while citizens’
organizations, labor unions, social movements have grown weaker. Today we might say that we
are a corporatocracy (or corpocracy), a nation ruled by corporations.
While we Americans are used to thinking of our country as being a land of opportunity, a
meritocracy where those who work hard get ahead and some come to be our leaders, those
studies found that in reality a small wealthy group cornered most of the opportunity. Some call
this wealthy group a “business aristocracy,” others name it a “power elite,” or an “establishment,”
while some describe it as a “ruling class.” Today this elite while somewhat more diverse, remains
an elite with overwhelming power, a wealthy aristocracy, a dominant ruling class.
Not a Conspiracy, a Class
Whatever one wants to call it, such an elite does not constitute a conspiracy. The members of
the elite often live together in the same communities, belong to the same social clubs, and sit
on the same corporate boards. They have many opportunities to confer, to collaborate, even, if
one prefers, to collude. They see things from the vantage point of their position in the higher
echelons of society. In part because they have great vested economic interests and in part because
as owners and managers they are accustomed to administer and to direct, they think they often
know what’s best for society as a whole.
What might sometimes appear to be a conspiracy by the wealthy and powerful corporate elite is
simply the way that their interests and outlooks coincide, leading them to act together to carry
out their will politically. This commonality of outlook and action is not a conspiracy. It is simply
upper class economic interests expressed in social and political organization and policy.
Yet, corporate leaders, either because they have specific interests based in different economic
sectors or because they hold different ideologies, do not always agree. For example, Procter &
Gamble offers domestic partnership benefits to its employees and their partners who may not be
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married or may be same-sex partners while Chiquita does not offer such benefits. Still, though
they might disagree on some issues, corporations more often agree on economically important
ones, such as moving taxes from the corporations and the wealthy onto workers and consumers.
And they might share a common view that health care costs should be shifted from the company
to the employees. Corporations sometimes form rival economic blocs, take on different social
causes, and might support different political parties or candidates. Then again they unite around a
party or a politician who will serve their interests.
The corporate world is not a conspiracy and it is not monolithic, but it does have a great deal
of social cohesion based on its wealth and property and it is a real force in politics at every
level. The corporations, acting in the market and within the framework of the state, constitute
modern capitalism. Consequently, the corporate owners and executives will often share common
conservative attitudes about the system and common hostile reactions to challenges to it. It is this
which despite their differences and disagreements makes them an establishment, a power elite, a
ruling class.
Who Rules Cincinnati?
In this study we look at the question of who rules Cincinnati. No one has asked this question and
proposed a serious answer for more than twenty years. The last comparable treatment to the one
presented here was done in the 1980s, when Polk Laffoon IV wrote “Who Runs Cincinnati?”
for the Cincinnati Post. Since then there have been few critical and in depth examinations of the
city’s power elite. Yet, the question of who runs Cincinnati is certainly worth asking. The people
of Cincinnati have a right to know who runs their city, how they run it, and what it has meant for
people and communities.
Our first question is: Who owns what? Consequently much of this study is made up largely
of lists and tables of the boards of directors of banks, corporations, foundations and civic
organizations. Much of this information is now readily available on the internet, made public
under the law, or posted by the companies themselves to attract investors. Other information
comes from government documents, academic studies or newspaper reports. While not all
information is from the same year, the information presented here is generally the most recent
available.
The second question is: How do the owners of property use their wealth to influence social
organizations and to influence politics? Once again, the internet provides lists of boards of
directors of social organizations and lists of contributors to political parties.
Our third question is: What has corporate control meant for Cincinnati? To answer that question
we use a number of previously published studies that look at social conditions in our city.
The first section of this report then simply describes the economic powers-that-be in Cincinnati.
The second section looks at the media and at politics. The third section describes what corporate
rule has meant for the city and its people. The fourth section gives a narrative history of the role
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of the ruling elite in ruling Cincinnati for a hundred years. Finally the “Discussion” at the end
offers the author’s contribution to the discussion over the facts presented here, suggesting what
he thinks needs to be done to begin to change the situation.
As this study demonstrates, Cincinnati’s largest corporations exert enormous influence over the
principal decisions about what happens in the city of Cincinnati. The corporate board members
and directors do not, however, run the city by themselves. The corporations dominate the
commanding heights of the economy and organize around themselves a constellation of lesser
companies and smaller businesses. The corporations also hire law firms and deploy armies of
attorneys in the defense of their firms, their wealth, and their activities. They have on their staff
public relations people and hire when needs be advertising companies to put forth their views.
The corporations use their economic power to influence all of the major civic organizations:
foundations and philanthropies, colleges and universities, and even the churches. They set the
parameters of local politics and their donations finance the candidates. Corporations not only
sway civic organizations and political parties, they also shape our society and our culture.
In certain respects, the dominant corporations here in Cincinnati have had even greater influence
than those in other cities because for so long they have avoided open conflicts, remained united,
and have faced little serious organized opposition. In part they have had so little opposition
because their opponents have not been clear about the nature of corporate power and how it
works. This pamphlet is intended to make clear the corporate domination of Cincinnati in order
that its opponents might more successfully challenge it.
The point of writing such an exposé of Cincinnati’s ruling elite is obviously not only to criticize
corporate power but to argue for an alternative. The alternative to what amounts to the economic
domination of the few is clearly the democratic rule of the majority. If Cincinnati’s working
people, all of us, black, white and immigrant were to unite, we could change the city. If they have
the money, we have the numbers. If they own the corporations, it is we as working people who
make those corporations run. If they manipulate the parties and the politicians, we have the
ability to mobilize and to create an independent political alternative.
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Introduction
Corporate Power in America: A Brief History
Corporations first became a major force in American society during the late nineteenth century
when J.P. Morgan Bank, John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, and Andrew Carnegie Steel
Company created the first great corporate powers. During the twentieth century, through growth
and mergers, corporations with names like General Mills, General Motors and General Electric
consolidated their position at the center not only of the economy, but also of politics. Corporate
leaders of that era believed they knew what was best for America; they believed that their interest
was the public interest. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Charles E. Wilson,
the head of General Motors, to be Secretary of Defense in 1953, Wilson told the Senate Armed
Services Committee that he could see no conflict between his corporation and national interest
because, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.”
Corporations dominated the American economic landscape throughout the last century, but
within a framework established by the government, a government over which the corporations
themselves exerted the greatest influence. Two great movements emerged to regulate the
corporations and protect the people. The first arose from the corporations themselves and the
second from popular movements of farmers and working people.
Employers themselves accepted and indeed often sought government regulation to prevent
destructive competition, to assure stable markets, and to create political and social stability in
which they could make profits. Corporations and the government working together created
the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed), the Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) establishing the
capitalist rules of the game. These various government agencies helped to stabilize and thus to
legitimize the corporate economy.
Social movements of farmers in the 1890s, workers in the 1930s, and African Americans in
the 1960s also pressured government to create social programs to protect the population from
the market’s boom and bust cycles and from the arbitrary power of big business. The Social
Security Administration, the National Labor Relations Board, unemployment insurance, state
social welfare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, the Environmental Protection Agency and the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration were all results of social movements fighting for
greater protection from the market and for shelter from the abuses of corporate power.
For half a century American capitalism functioned under that combination of government
regulation and social programs. The peak of prosperity was reached in the period between 1938
and 1974, and particularly after World War II when the United States came to dominate the
world economy. Throughout those year corporations made great profits and workers in heavy
industry and those who were represented by unions—about a third of all workers—received
a share of that wealth. Even the other two-thirds of working people saw some gains, though
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African Americans, Latinos and the poor of Appalachia and women generally did not do as well.
In addition to the regulatory framework, social programs, and the post-war economic supremacy,
another factor in the prosperity of the period from the ’30s to the ’80s was America’s permanent
war economy. The United States fought one war after another from 1941 until 1975: World War
II, the Korean War, and then the Vietnam War. Under a system that might be called military
Keynesianism, during the 1950s to the 1970s the U.S. government spent between 5 and 10
percent of its GNP on arms production. Arms production became, in part, a regulator of the
American economy.
U.S. military might made the United States the dominant world power, challenged only by
the Soviet Union. As Great Britain yielded preeminence to American military, political and
economic power after World War II, the United States came to dominate South America, the
Middle East, and parts of Asia. U.S. oil companies came to control Middle Eastern oil and
American corporations dominated not only Central but also South America. The combination
of arms production, war, and the imperial control of resources and markets were critical to the
profitability and the power of American corporations.
So, for about 50 years Americans accepted corporate domination because the system seemed to
work well for so many in the United States. Though it always worked best for the corporate elite.
Corporations: What’s Different Today
Beginning around 1975, however, with the rise of competition from Europe, Japan and later
China, the United States found its economic, political and military preeminence challenged.
While many Americans believed that their country was “number one,” by the 1980s by many
measures the United States had fallen behind economically. The most powerful example was
the growing presence of Japanese cars in the American automobile market. Faced with foreign
competition, America’s corporate leaders decided to overhaul not only their industrial plants, but
also the entire system of government, and the social pact that had guaranteed many American
people a decent life.
American corporations transformed themselves once again and changed their relationship to
government and to society in ways that have affected us all. America today is a result of the
transformation carried out in the 1980s and 1990s as corporations threw off government’s
regulatory controls, ratcheted down corporate taxes, broke labor unions and lowered wages.
Above all, corporations embraced the new global economy that allowed them to create a worldwide manufacturing and marketing system. Deregulation at home was accompanied by free
trade abroad, a combination that shattered the old economic and social relations of the post-war
period. The social pact that had assured high wages, decent pensions, health insurance and social
stability for many went straight into the shredder.
How could it happen? Corporations, as any corporate executive will tell you, exist solely to
produce profits for their stockholders, so, faced with competition, corporations attempted to
lower their costs by lowering wages and benefits, and also by cutting the social programs and
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thereby reducing corporate taxes. Since the 1980s corporations have engaged in several strategies
to reduce labor costs. They have moved plants abroad to find cheap labor in places like Mexico or
China. When possible, corporations broke unions or forced unions to accept lower wages, fewer
benefits, and harsher working conditions. They out-sourced or contracted work to non-union or
substandard subcontractors. Consequently U.S. workers’ wages remained stagnant for more than
thirty years and if families were able to maintain their standard of living, it was largely due to the
increased role of women workers in the economy.
Economic Policy Institute. (Lawrence Michel et al, State of Working America, 2006-2007, at:
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060816)
Cutting Benefits
At the same time that they lowered wages, corporations also worked to cut the cost of benefit
programs. Employers forced unions to negotiate concessionary or give-back contracts throughout
the period from the 1980s until today. Under these contracts employees gave up health and
pension benefits and found a greater share of health costs foisted on them by the employers.
“Fewer employees receive health insurance through their employers now than in the past, as
coverage has declined from 61.5% in 1989 to 58.9% in 2000 and down to 55.9% in 2004 (the
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latest data available). Less well known is the fact that those who still receive employer-provided
coverage are now paying a larger share of those insurance costs,” according to a study by the
Economic Policy Institute. (Lawrence Michel et al, State of Working America, 2006-2007, at:
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060816)
Cutting the Social Wage
In the 1980s President Ronald Reagan, backed by the major corporations, took steps to weaken
unions, reduce the budget and to cut taxes on the wealthy. Historically workers have received
not only a wage from their employers (wages + benefits) but also a social wage from the
government. The government provided education, health care and social welfare programs such as
unemployment insurance, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and general assistance for
the indigent. Government agencies—public schools and universities, health clinics and hospitals,
the waterworks and the sewage district, the unemployment and the welfare office—required tens
of thousands of workers to provide these social services.
Reagan’s Director of the Office of Management and the Budget, David Stockman, developed
the concept of the “strategic deficit,” that is using a permanent federal deficit to justify cuts in
government programs, employment, and beneficiaries. Beginning in the 1980s corporations
supported government reduction of services to millions of Americans, cutting tens of thousands
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of government jobs. So, as employers cut wages and benefits, the government also cut the social
wage, all of these together cutting the total wage bill for American workers.
Free Trade, Neoliberalism and Globalization
U.S. corporations had undertaken the reorganization of themselves and their relationship
with the government and their employees in order to be able to compete on the world market
against Germany and Japan. With the decline of Japan, the competition was principally with
the Germany and the other countries of the European Union, though by the 1990s China had
begun to become a major economic power as well. To compete with the European Union, the
United States also sought to construct its own common market region in the form of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. This accelerated the
tendency to move U.S. plants to Mexico and other low-wage, developing countries.
The U.S. used its powerful role in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
to force developing countries to accept structural adjustments that mirrored the transformation
of the U.S. economy: privatization, deregulation, budget cuts, tax cuts for corporations, weakened
labor unions. American corporations generally supported the U.S. policy of transforming the
General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) into the World Trade Organization and
inviting China to become a part of it. This took place within the framework of a general lowering
of tariffs and trade barriers to create what was called “free trade.” In reality it meant freedom for
U.S. corporations to invade foreign markets.
All of this taken together came to be called neoliberal globalization, that is, a return in many
ways to the laissez-faire, free trade economic ideals of the nineteenth century. We raced back into
the past where workers had no rights or benefits.
Wealth Gap
The result of the corporate reorganization of America was growing wealth and power on the one
hand and increasing poverty on the other. The middle class shrank, the working class sunk, and
the number of poor increased.
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Total Net Worth in U.S.: $42.3892 trillion ($42,389,200,000,000) Source: Arthur B. Kennickell, “A Rolling Tide:
Changes in the Distribution of Wealth in the U.S., 1989-2001,” Table 10. (Levy Economics Institute: November,
2003) at: http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html The top five percent of the population control more than 50 percent of the wealth of the country.
They reinvest that wealth in their corporations which in turn bring them more profits, while the
incomes of most Americans who depend on wages have stagnated.
Cincinnati Corporations Reorganize
Cincinnati corporations participated in the corporate-governmental-social reorganization of the
period of the 1980s to the 2000s to varying degrees. Like corporations around the country, they
fought for free trade and attempted to weaken unions and lower wages. Procter & Gamble, for
example, used its political power to promote free trade, supporting the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and later the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)
and the fast track authority used to avoid the usual legislative process in order to push those
agreements through Congress. Procter & Gamble was frequently cited as a U.S. corporation that
would be one of the principal beneficiaries of CAFTA. (See John Pepper’s speech in praise of
NAFTA and for renewing fast track at http://www.usaengage.org/archives/legislative/pepper.
html and Thomas B. Edsall “CAFTA in Peril on Capitol Hill, One Business Leader Gives
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Lawmakers an Ultimatum,” Washington Post, Sunday, June 12, 2005; A06, at: http://www.
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/11/AR2005061100575_pf.html)
Chiquita, the Cincinnati-based banana company, also fought for free trade, but did so by paying
terrorist death squads in Colombia, right-wing groups that fought left-wing guerrillas, murdered
innocent villagers and assassinated labor union leaders. Chiquita was charged with paying more
than $1.7 million starting in 1997 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a violent
right-wing group known by its Spanish acronym AUC. Chiquita admitted that it had and pled
guilty to the charge and paid a $25 million fine.
(Matt Apuzzo, “Chiquita to Pay $25M Fine in Terror Case,” Associated Press, in Washington Post,
at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/15/AR2007031500354.
html)
Like corporations around the country, Kroger Company, faced with competition from non-union
Walmart, fought a series of battles with unions in the 1990s and again in the 2000s in an attempt
to lower wages and shift benefit costs on to its workers. After the United Food and Commercial
Workers Union struck Safeway stores in California in 2003, both Kroger and Albertsons (later
acquired by Kroger) locked out more than 70,000 workers.
During that same 2003-2004 strike Kroger’s West Coast grocery chain, Ralphs, engaged in
strike-breaking tactics that eventually led to a court suit and a $50 million judgment against
the company. As reported in the San Diego Union, “The Ralphs Grocery Co. policy of illegally
rehiring workers under false identities during the 2003-2004 California United Food and
Commercial Workers (UFCW) strike and lockout led to one of the largest criminal settlements
ever between a company and a labor union. Ralphs pled guilty to ‘identity theft, conspiracy
and submitting false tax information’ in order to avoid trial on a 53 count indictment including
the above offenses and other charges. The UFCW [United Food and Commercial Workers
Union] and the federal government will divide almost $50 million, most of which will go to
compensating union workers for lost wages, as well as repaying the union for lost union dues and
financial assistance dispensed during the lockout.” (San Diego Union-Tribune, 07/01/2006, cited
at: http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/rs/profile.cfm?id=254)
During this period some corporations simply closed plants here in Cincinnati and moved the
work to the South, to Mexico, or to other countries. General Motors, for example, closed its
assembly plant in Norwood several years ago and the Ford Motor Company has just closed a
transmission plant in Batavia. Meanwhile these and other corporations have built and expanded
auto production facilities in Mexico. When those plants closed, other industries in Cincinnati
such as machine tools and parts plants were also affected. Ultimately local companies that
sold everything from groceries and clothes to stoves and cars also lost business. While the big
corporations continued to make a profit, small businesses closed, workers become unemployed,
and communities suffered.
So we see that globalization and business restructuring form the contemporary context for
understanding the role of corporations today both nationally and locally. Let’s turn then to
describe corporate power in Cincinnati.
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Part I
Corporate Power in Cincinnati
The Great Corporations
The starting point of an analysis of economic, social and political power in Cincinnati has to
be the identification of the largest corporations. We will look at various measures of economic
power and influence here: sheer size in the city or region and whether or not the company has a
headquarters here. We look first at corporations, then banks, next the construction industry, and
finally at law firms. We look at corporate salaries and personal wealth. Finally we conclude with a
brief description of the largest and most powerful Cincinnati corporations.
The most important factor in a corporation’s role in the city and region is the size of the
corporation as measured in revenue. Ten Cincinnati corporations appear on the Fortune magazine
list of the 1,000 largest corporations in the United States and two of those corporations, Procter
& Gamble and Kroger, are in the top 30. While these corporations and their executive do not
absolutely control Cincinnati’s major social institutions, they are influential and often decisive in
every major decision and action of significance taken in Cincinnati and Southwest Ohio. (See
Table 1.)
Cincinnati Corporations on the Fortune 1000 List
Corporation
The Kroger Co.
Procter & Gamble Co.
Federated Department Stores (Macy’s)
Fifth Third Bancorp
Western & Southern Financial
Chiquita Brands Intl
American Financial Corp
Cintas
Convergys
E.W. Scripps
Nat’l Rank
21
24
76
308
473
488
503
589
684
704
Revenues in Millions $
60,552.9
56,741.0
28,711.0
7,495.0
4,313.9
4,499.1
4,254.0
3,403.6
2,789.8
2,666.3
Cincinnati Corporations on Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 Lists
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2007/states/OH.html
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The Region’s Largest Corporations
A look at the largest corporations in the region, rather than simply in the Cincinnati area, gives
a somewhat different list, one that includes other important corporations such as AK Steel,
Ashland Inc., and Omnicare.
Cincinnati Region Largest Corporations
Based on Fortune 500 List
Nat’l Rank
Corporation
The Kroger Co.
21
Procter & Gamble Co.
24
Cinergy Corp. (merged with
117 (Duke’s rank)
Duke Energy 2005)
Ashland Inc. (Chemicals)
239
Fifth Third Bancorp
308
AK Steel
385
Omnicare (Health)
406
Western & Southern
473
Financial
American Financial
492
Revenue in Millions $
60,552.90
56,741.00
18,944.00
7,834.00
7,495.00
5,647.50
5,292.80
4,313.90
4,038.30
Cincinnati Area’s Largest Corporations
Based on Fortune 500 List
Financial Institutions
Financial institutions represent a particularly important part of any economy because they
concentrate wealth and provide credit and financial services. In the Cincinnati area five banks
dominate the local financial sector, though only two of them are based in the Cincinnati area and
only one of them is among the largest corporations.
Largest Tri-State Banks and Bank Holding Companies
Corporation (Based in City of )
CEO, President or Director
Fifth Third Bank (Cincinnati, Ohio)
Kevin T. Kabat, CEO, Director and Pres.
Provident Bank / National City Bank
Robert L. Hoverson, President
(Cleveland)
US Bank (Minneapolis)
Jerry Grundhofer, CEO
PNC Financial Service Group (Pittsburgh) James E. Rohr, Chairman and CEO
First Financial Bancorp (Hamilton, Ohio)
Bruce E. Leep, President and CEO
Largest Tri-State Banks and Bank Holding Companies
Business Courier
http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2003/06/23/list1.html
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Corporations with Headquarters in Cincinnati
While a dozen or so corporations found on these two lists are the dominant powers, we might
include in our analysis of local corporate power all 36 corporations which have their headquarters
in Cincinnati or in the region.
Corporations Headquartered in Cincinnati
Corporation
Location
513 Ventures
Chiquita Brands Int’l
Cincinnati Bell
Cincinnati Financial Corp
Cintas
Mason, OH
Comair Airlines
Erlanger, KY
Convergys
Cornerstone Brands
The David J. Joseph Co. (metal scrap)
Duro Bag Manufacturing Co.
Ludlow, KY
Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc.
E.W. Scripps Company
Fifth Third Bank
Formica Corporation
Fujitec America
Lebanon, OH
Great American Financial Grp
GE-Aviation
Evendale, OH
General Cable Company
Kao Brands
Kroger
La Rosa’s Pizza
LCN Solutions
Luxottica Retail
Mason, OH
Milacron
Mitsubishi Auto. Electric
Mason, OH
Omnicare
Covington, KY
Paycor. Inc.
Portion Pac
Mason, OH
- 17 -
Parent, Subsidiary, Brand
Delta
Inter-Active Corp.
Johnson-Johnson
Kao Corp/Jergens
Lenscrafters, Pearl, etc.
(Chart continues on next page)
Procter & Gamble
Roto-Rooter
Skyline Chili
Totes
Toyota Motor Mfg. N.A.
United Dairy Farmers
United Playing Card Co.
Western & Southern Finc’l
Erlanger, KY
Norwood, OH
Cincinnati’s Corporate Headquarters
Wikipedia List at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_company_headquarters_in_Cincinnati,_Ohio
This list adds other important corporations such as GE Aviation, Toyota Motor Manufacturing
of North America, and Comair airlines.
Cincinnati and the Military Industrial Complex
Some of Cincinnati’s multinational corporations provide services and products to the military,
with contracts amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
Top Five Military Contractors in State of Ohio
Corporation
General Electric Company, Inc.
Procter & Gamble
Science Applications International
CFM International Inc.
The British Petroleum Co. PLC
Total of above
Product, Service
Aircraft Engines
Food Items
Logistics
Aircraft Engines
Fuel
Ohio Military Facilities
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/ohio.htm
Total Amount
$ 437,173,000
$ 231,448,000
$ 146,511,000
$ 123,882,000
$ 101,982,000
$1,040,996,000
A corporation like General Electric forms part of the military-industrial complex, that group
of corporations and military officials at the center of the defense industry and national military
policy. While General Electric and Procter & Gamble are the biggest military contractors there
are dozens of other Cincinnati companies engaged in military production with contracts ranging
from a few thousand to millions of dollars.
- 18 -
Construction Industry
The construction industry remains relatively independent of Cincinnati’s major corporations,
though of course it is ultimately dependent on the banks for financing. Unlike manufacturing and
many service industries, construction remains made up of some large and many medium-sized
and small building companies, contractors and subcontractors. Turner, based in New York and
with an office in the Cincinnati area, is one of the country’s largest construction companies.
Allied Construction Industries (ACI), a nonprofit trade association, is made up of over 600
member companies who employ more than 30,000 individuals throughout Greater Cincinnati.
ACI encompasses many companies engaged in construction in the tri-state area. The
organization’s executive committee and board of directors reflect the more decentralized and
diverse character of the industry.
ACI Executive Committee
Tim Beischel, President
Mike Strawser, First Vice President
Mark Luegering, Second Vice President
John Neyer, Secretary
John Wilson, Treasurer
Ken Fender, At Large
Jim Imbus, Current Past President
ACI Board of Directors
Joseph Albert
Jack Coors
Jim Donnellon Mark Douglas Kathleen Fischer James Flach
Scott Gurney Jim Manning
Jay Meyers Willie Reeves Jack Scott
Steve Spaulding Levon Thompson R. J. Beischel Building Co.
Valley Interior Systems Inc. Messer Construction Co. Neyer Construction Inc.
The Bank of Kentucky Baker Concrete Construction Co., Inc. Imbus Roofing Co., Inc. Siemering Tile Co., Inc.
Northside Bank & Trust Company
Barnes & Dennig, Inc.
Ben Hur Construction Co., Inc.
Craftsman Electric, Inc.
Flach Brothers Masonry
Frost Brown Todd LLC
Engineering Excellence, Inc
Dugan & Meyers Construction Co.
Mirage Caulking, Inc.
H.C. Nutting Company
Turner Construction
FOXX Construction
Allied Construction Industries at: http://www.aci-construction.org/
- 19 -
Only the very largest of Cincinnati’s construction companies play a significant role in city politics
and social organizations. For example, Pete Strange, president of the Messer Construction Co.,
one of the region’s largest privately owned companies, sits as the chair of the Regional Leadership
Forum, an extension of the Chamber of Commerce. (“Messer President to chair regional
leadership group,” Business Courier, Jan 12, 2005, at: http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/
stories/2005/01/10/daily38.html )
Cincinnati’s Most Important Law Firms
Cincinnati’s corporations hire the services of the city’s largest law firms to deal with many aspects
of their corporate business, some of the national and some of the local companies. In many
respects, corporations function through the law firms which represent their economic interests
with regard to government, other corporations, their employees and the public. Consequently
corporations and their law firms develop close relationships and economic partnerships which
lead to social relationships and to political alliances.
Cincinnati’s Largest Law Firms
Based on Number of Attorneys in the Cincinnati Office
Law Firm
Attorneys
in
Dinsmore & Shohl
c. 190
Procter & Gamble, Castellini, Huff,
Milacron
Frost Brown Todd
c. 160
AK Steel, Cincinnati Bell, Convergys,
E.W. Scripps, Luxottica, Turner
Construction
Taft, Stettinius & Hollister
c. 140
U.S. Bank, Cincinnati Bengals,
AK Steel, Chiquita
Keating Muething & Klekamp
c. 110
Cintas, Fifth Third Bank, National
City Bank, American Financial Group,
Walmart
Thompson Hine
c. 60
Convergys, Fifth Third Bank, Goodyear,
Kroger, Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Sheild
Gordon Head & Ritchie
Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease
Lerner Sampson & Rothfuss
c. 60
c. 60
c. 60
Unknown
Fifth Third Bank, Western Southern Life,
Unknown
Strauss & Troy
c. 50
PNC Bank, BP, Corporex, Meier, Bank
One Cincinnati, Vandecar Holdings
Ullmer & Berne
c. 40
Unknown
Business Courier and other sources.
Major Clients
- 20 -
Some of these law firms are themselves important businesses with national and even international
business. Take, for example, Thompson Hine:
Established in 1911, Thompson Hine today is among the largest business law firms
in the United States….With more than 370 lawyers, Thompson Hine serves premier
businesses worldwide, including: AK Steel Corporation, Anthem Blue Cross/Blue
Shield, Avery Dennison, BIC Corporation, CH Energy Group, Central Hudson Gas &
Electric Corporation, Crown Equipment Corporation, The Davey Tree Expert Company,
Developers Diversified Realty Corporation, Eaton Corporation, Energizer/Eveready,
Fifth Third Bank Firstmerit Corporation, Ford Motor Company, Formica Corporation,
Goodrich Corporation, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, The Hartford, Jo-Ann
Stores, KeyCorp/KeyBank, LexisNexis, Limited Brands, The Lubrizol Corporation,
MeadWestvaco, Milacron Inc., Miller Brewing, Morgan Stanley, Nationwide Insurance,
Netjets, Inc., Newell Rubbermaid, Nordson, Office Depot, Inc., Oglebay Norton, Parker
Hannifin, Polyone, Procter & Gamble, S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., Sherwin-Williams,
Smythe, Cramer Co., Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Steris Corporation, Time Warner
Cable, Toro Company, Verizon, Victoria’s Secret, and Whirlpool Corporation.
(http://www.martindale.com/Thompson-Hine-LLP/1428427-law-firm-office.htm)
Such large and powerful firms also become players in local politics in their own right. In fact,
they are themselves large corporations.
The Wealth of Corporate Directors and Executives
The major corporations based in Cincinnati pay their CEOs and other top executives’ enormous
salaries.
Corporate CEO’s Salaries in Cincinnati
Individual
Corporation
Annual Salary
A.G. Lafley, Chair & CEO
Procter & Gamble
$26,577,000
Terry Lundgren, Chair
Macy’s
$ 16,271,923
Ken Lowe, CEO
E.W. Scrips
$ 9,760,844
David Dillon, CEO
Kroger Co.
$ 7,466,062
Carl Lindner III, Co-CEO
American Financial Group
$ 7,102,328
S. Craig Lindner, Co-CEO
American Financial Group
$ 6,827,544
Fernando Aguirre, Chair
Chiquita Brands
$ 1,893,673
Scott Farmer, CEO
Cintas Corp.
$ 1,333,400
Mike Contreras, Senior VP E.W. Scripps
$ 1,322,610
Tanios Viviani, Pres.
Fresh Express
$ 1,211,176
Cincy: The Magazine for Business Professionals
December 2007 issue, posted on November 15, 2007
www.cincybusinessmag.com
- 21 -
The sheer wealth of corporate directors and executives makes it possible for them to have a
tremendous influence on the economic, social and political life of Cincinnati and the region.
The millions of dollars they earn in salaries—not to mention other sources of wealth—makes it
possible for them to fund political parties, to donate to charities, to give to the arts. Through all of
these activities they exert their influence on every aspect of life in our city.
Ownership and management of Cincinnati-based corporations has made two local business
leaders among the richest 400 people in the United States. Richard T. Farmer and Carl Lindner
both have wealth measured in billions of dollars.
Cincinnati’s Wealthiest
Individual and Firm
Carl Lindner and Family,
American Financial Group
Richard T. Farmer,
Cintas Corporation
Estimated Wealth
$2.3 Billion
$1.4 Billion
Forbes 400 List of the Richest Americans, 2005 and 2007
Source
Forbes 400 List
2007
Forbes 400 List
2005
The Dominant Corporations
When we look at these lists and when we look at their connections to local institutions (discussed
below) we find that seven corporations play a dominant role in the economic and social life of
Cincinnati: 1) Procter & Gamble; 2) Kroger, 3) Macy’s/Federated Department Stores; 4) Fifth
Third Bancorp, 5) Western and Southern Financial, 6) American Financial Corp, and, 7) E.W.
Scripps. These seven companies constitute the dominant cluster of corporations in the area and
their board members, presidents, and CEOs make up the decision-making elite of the city and
the region. Of all of these, Procter & Gamble has for the last 100 years and continues today to
play the greatest role in the life of the city.
The Character of Cincinnati’s Dominant Corporations
Cincinnati’s dominant corporations are national and multinational corporations that have their
corporate headquarters here though they have most of their actual operations either around the
United States or in other parts of the world.
• P&G is number one in the household and personal products industry and number 25
in the Fortune 500 list. P&G has operations in nearly 80 countries and sells its products
in 140. Last year, P&G generated 56% of its revenues, almost $39 million, abroad. P&G
employs 138,000 employees around the world.
- 22 -
• Kroger is number one among food and drug stores and ranks number 26 on the Fortune
500 list. Kroger operates 2,491 retail grocery stores in 31 states under nearly two dozen
different names. The company also operates 780 convenience stores in 16 states under
five names, 406 jewelry stores under several names, 664 supermarket fuel centers, 1,960
pharmacies in its stores, and 42 food processing or manufacturing facilities. Altogether
Kroger employs 310,000 people, most of those who are blue collar workers are unionized.
• American Financial Group (AFG) is a holding company engaged in the insurance and
investment business. AFG has dozens of subsidiaries, mostly insurance companies. The
corporation employs about 5,000 people, has over a billion dollars in sales and hundreds
of millions in annual income. It competes successfully with firms such as Allstate,
Prudential, Progressive and State Farm.
• Fifth Third Bancorp is the fourteenth largest commercial bank in the U.S. and number
299 on the Fortune 500 List. It is a diversified financial services company, has $101 billion
in assets, operates 18 affiliates with 1,182 full-service Banking Centers, including 104
Bank Mart(R) locations in grocery stores and 2,149 ATMs in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana,
Michigan, Illinois, Florida, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Missouri. Fifth
Third is one of the largest money managers in the Midwest. As of June 30, 2007 it had
$232 billion in assets, of which it managed $34 billion for individuals, corporations and
not-for-profit organizations.
• Federated Department Stores (now Macy’s), owner of Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores,
is the fourth largest general merchandiser in the country (after Walmart, Target and
Sears) operating over 450 stores in 34 state, Puerto Rico and Guam, and employing over
100,000 employees. Federated/Macy’s has total revenues of $28.7 million.
• E.W. Scripps is a diverse media corporation, the ninth largest entertainment corporation
in the country (after such giants as Time Warner, Walt Disney, News Corp, CBS, Viacom,
Clear Channel, Live Nation, and Warner Music Group). Scripps has revenues of $2.6
million and is listed as 704 on the Fortune 1000 list. Scripps Networks owns five national
lifestyle television networks and related websites such as Home & Garden Television
(HGTV) which is distributed to more than 91 million United States households. Scripps
Networks has a 12% interest in FOX Sports Net South.
Cincinnati Corporations and National Corporate Power
While we are not doing a national study of corporate power here, we should note that Cincinnati
corporations are tied to other corporations and banks and to important national and international
political figures through what are called “interlocking directorates” or “interlocks.” That is, board
members of Cincinnati corporations also sit on the boards of other corporations. In this way
Cincinnati’s corporate elite comes to form part of a national corporate elite.
- 23 -
For example, Procter & Gamble board members also sit on the boards of other major
corporations as indicated in the following diagram.
As we see here, Procter & Gamble board members are also members of such important
corporations as AT&T, General Motors, Boeing and Delta. Collaborating on the Procter &
Gamble board, and on others, these industrialists form relationships and often develop common
outlooks that might lead to other economic, social and political relationships. Interlocking
directorates are the tendons and sinews that tie together the corporate class.
How Do Corporations Rule?
How do Cincinnati’s corporations run the city? First, corporation board members, and
executives sit on the boards of directors of all of the city’s most important social organizations
whether foundations, museums, or social welfare organizations. Second, these corporations
provide, often in the form of philanthropy, much of the funding that pays for the work of those
organizations. Third, corporations and their law firms provide not only legal support but also
programmatic ideas for those institutions. Fourth, the major corporations create together with
- 24 -
other corporations, businesses and institutions such corporate alliances as Cincinnati Business
Committee (CBC), Downtown Cincinnati Incorporated (DCI), and Cincinnati Center City
Development Corporation (3CDC) to promote their economic development plans. Finally,
corporations generate the wealth that allows both the firms and the corporate-connected families
to influence civic politics through financial contributions to parties and candidates. Through this
array of organizations, lubricated with corporate money, corporations come to dominate the news
media and corporate ideology, programs and plans become the dominant information available.
Where one family has been central to the founding, ownership or management of a corporation,
such as the Lindners of the American Financial Group, we might find that family name, their
friends and associates, recurring on corporate boards and other social organizations. Where we
are dealing with a multinational corporation such as P&G or Kroger, the corporate leadership
will change from decade to decade, though for many years one man (or less frequently woman)
will be the key figure. David Dillon of Kroger, for example, is at present a central figure in the
Cincinnati constellation of corporate and civic boards of directors. In some cases a figure who
is not from one of the richest and most powerful corporations, but who is quite wealthy, wellconnected, and ambitious will play a more central role. Robert H. Castellini, Chairman of the
Castellini Co., for example, has been active in Cincinnati corporations, on civic boards, and in
politics.
The Direct Power of Corporations
Corporations such as P&G, Kroger, Macy’s/Federated Department Stores, American Financial
Group, Cintas, Chiquita and E.W. Scripps have the ability to exert their power both directly and
indirectly. Corporations exist to make profit for their stockholders and they take the measures
necessary to do so. Those straight-forward, profit-seeking measures constitute the direct power
of the corporation. Corporations dispose of as they wish their wealth, land and other property.
They contract other companies, hire attorneys and public relations firms, and contract the services
of many others. As we see in the diagram below, they exert direct control or influence over many
different groups and individuals.
- 25 -
Corporations can open or close plants, offices or stores, they can hire or fire personnel, they
can raise and lower salaries and wages, and increase or decrease benefits, and they can invest or
disinvest in different regions, cities or neighborhoods.
Example: Cintas
The case of Cintas shows the kind of power that corporations wield directly over their employees.
Here is the description of the company found on the Cintas company website:
Headquartered in Cincinnati, OH, Cintas Corporation provides highly specialized
services to businesses of all types throughout North America.
Cintas operates more than 400 facilities in the U.S. and Canada, including 11
manufacturing plants and seven distribution centers that employ more than 34,000
people.
- 26 -
Cintas has grown for 38 consecutive years, with fiscal 2007 sales of $3.71 billion, an
increase of 8.9% from 2006. Net income of $334.5 million increased 3.4 percent from
$323.4 million last year, and earnings per diluted share increased 8.9 percent from $1.92
last year to $2.09 this year.
Cintas was founded by Richard T. Farmer, Chairman of the Board. Scott Farmer was
appointed President & Chief Executive Officer in 2003 and Bob Kohlhepp serves as Vice
Chairman. (http://www.cintas.com/company/)
In 2003, some Cintas workers joined a campaign by two labor unions, UNITE-HERE and the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to organize a union. The union focused its campaign on
health and safety. It gave as its prime example the March 2007 death of Eleazar Torres Gómez
who was killed at the Cintas’s Tulsa laundry after being caught in an inadequately guarded
conveyor and dragged into an industrial dryer. While worker safety was the prime concern, issues
of wages, benefits and dignity on the job were also important factors for workers who became
involved. The unions accused the company of racial and gender discrimination as well as failing to
pay workers the wages due them under the law.
Cintas responded by hiring attorneys and public relations companies to fight the union’s
campaign. It was, in turn, accused by the union of engaging in illegal activities. The General
Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) charged Cintas with illegally firing
workers, threatening plant closures, and unlawfully interrogating workers to stop them from
forming a union. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld an NLRB
decision that found the company’s handbook illegal because it discouraged workers from talking
about their wages and working conditions with others.
(http://www.uniformjustice.org/files/Why_Cintas_workers_want_a_union.pdf )
Cintas has continued to resist the efforts of its more than 30,000 employees to organize a labor
union and engage in collective bargaining for wages, benefits and conditions.
The Indirect Power of Corporations
While corporations wield direct control over their operations and their employees, they also wield
great influence over other institutions. Corporations place their directors and top executives—or
often retired chairs and former CEOs—on the boards of local foundations and philanthropies as
well as colleges and universities. While the corporations argue that this shows their commitment
to the community, it is in any case another extension of their power and influence. The diagram
below shows how corporate influence flows to other organizations.
- 27 -
Corporations take seats on these boards for a variety of reasons, but principally because
corporations desire to influence every aspect of economic, political and social life. With their men
and women on these boards, they know everything that goes on in the city, and they have a voice
and a vote on every important decision. They take these seats principally to protect and further
their own interests and to put forward their vision of society. They work to protect and enhance
their own real estate investments and to steer social development into channels profitable for
them. Everywhere they put forward their notion that markets, competition, and individualism
should be the dominant values. In a general sense they work to construct a consumer culture.
The corporate board members and executives by occupying on these boards keep others from
other sections of society—small business, labor unions, African American organizations—from
filling those seats. Before about 1980 it was often thought necessary to include a representative
of organized labor on public and even private boards, but with the declining power of the unions
that is seldom done now except in cities like San Francisco and New York where unions remain
important. Corporations take seats on the boards of directors of many institutions to ensure that
they are in control, and that rival groups with other visions, strategies, and cultural values do not
challenge them.
- 28 -
Cincinnati’s Most Important Foundations
Corporations and the wealthy often endow charitable foundations. These foundations extend
corporate power into the area of philanthropy, the arts, and not-for-profit social organizations.
While the corporations and the wealthy do not directly control the foundations and their
policies, corporate board members, executives, and their allies often hold positions on the
foundation board and are in a position to shape the foundations’ activities.
Top 20 Foundations Awarding Grants in Cincinnati
c. 2000
Foundation
Procter & Gamble Fund
Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati
Greater Cincinnati Foundation
Firststar Foundation [now USBank]
Charles H. Dater Foundation
H.C.S. Foundation
Cinergy Foundation
Jacob S. Schmidlap Trusts 1 and 2
Federated Department Strs. [Macy’s]
Cleveland Foundation
Kresge Foundation
Scripps Howard Foundation
The Whitaker Foundation
The PNC Foundation
Mathile Family Foundation
Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation
Fidelity Foundation
GE Fund
San Francisco Foundation
Wesner Foundation
OH
OH
OH
OH
OH
OH
OH
OH
OH
OH
MI
OH
VA
PA
OH
FL
MA
CT
CA
OH
Type
CS
IN
CM
CS
IN
IN
CS
IN
CS
CM
IN
CS
IN
CS
IN
IN
CS
CS
CM
IN
Dollar Awards
$9,315,669
$4,402,962
$3,059,282
$2,295,710
$2,216,000
$2,165,000
$2,100,901
$1,846,333
$1,179,044
$1,500,000
$1,450,000
$1,095,425
$1,014594
$ 844,892
$ 752,800
$ 741,227
$ 555,000
$ 448,524
$ 351,000
$ 330,871
No. of Grants
96
7
85
58
85
12
54
31
61
1
3
27
2
33
14
1
12
4
1
1
Foundation Center
http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/statistics/pdf/03_fund_geo/2005/50_recp_msa/r_cincinnati_05.pdf
As seen from this chart, the large corporate foundations give tens of millions of dollars to
organizations in Cincinnati. Corporate foundations often act as a link between the corporate
power and the world of charity, education and the arts. Through the foundations, corporations
thus play a role in establishing the acceptable parameters of research and investigation, cultural
expression, and social reform.
- 29 -
Corporations and Universities
Corporations and the wealthy have thought it important to play a role in order to shape
educational institutions and their programs. Corporate endowments, donations, and financing of
construction, support for programs and research, and promotion of corporate ideology have all
become an ever larger part of higher education in the United States. Universities themselves have
become corporations; they are administered, organized, and run along corporate lines.
Corporations take an interest in universities because they are important to corporations.
Universities train the workers, technicians and managers who work for them and they conduct
research that benefits them. The presence of corporate executives on the boards of directors of
colleges and universities also appears to demonstrate the corporations’ commitment to higher
education and to the good of the community. Whatever the corporations’ motives, their influence
is everywhere in education.
Historically both private and public institutions of higher learning have been dominated by the
corporations with local small businesses and professionals playing a lesser role.
Throughout the United States corporations, in addition to already controlling private universities,
corporations have been taking greater control of what were once public universities. While from
the 1950s to the 1970s many states generously funded public education, since the 1980s states
have reduced university funding, cut back on the number of permanent full-time professors
teaching classes, and raised tuitions for students.
The fiscal crisis of the universities has allowed private corporations to step in, providing funding
for university research, but also taking greater control of public universities. (See the excellent
article by David Schultz, “the Corporate University in America,” Logos A Journal. Of Modern
Society and Culture,” Vol. 4, No. 4 (Fall, 2005) at: http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.4/schultz.
htm) Ohio’s public universities like those throughout the nation have faced such cuts in public
funding, increases in tuition, and cuts in programs or permanent full-time staff. While the
University of Cincinnati and Miami University were once public universities, today only about 10
percent of their budgets come from public funds. The universities have become beholden to the
corporations.
Example: The University of Cincinnati
We can take some local examples of the corporations’ indirect power. The University of
Cincinnati has a ten-member Board of Trustees, including one student trustee. All of the
members of the current board, except the student, are corporate executives, small businessmen,
attorneys or professionals in private practice. The corporate board members are Sandra W.
Helmann, vice president of American Financial (the Lindner firm) and Margaret Buchanan the
president and publisher of the Cincinnati Enquirer (Gannett Company). No working class or
poor people, no unions or minority organizations are represented on the board even though this
is a public university which serves many working class people.
- 30 -
Though Cincinnati’s population is half African American there is only one African American
board member, Phillip R. Cox of Cox Financial Corp. He is less a representative of the African
American community, than another a representative of corporate power. Cox also sits on the
boards of the Federal Reserve Bank, Cinergy, Cincinnati Bell, Touchstone Mutual Funds,
Bethesda Hospital, and the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History. In addition, he chairs the
Cincinnati Business Committee (CBC), and recently accepted a position on the board of the
Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC). (http://www.uc.edu/trustees/
trustees.html)
Corporations also influence the University of Cincinnati through their contributions to university
research, an amount that now reaches almost nine million dollars.
Corporate Research Investment in UC - in Millions
President’s Report Card to the Board of Trustees
http://www.uc.edu/reportcard/Sept07/goal2-6.htm
Example: Xavier University
We find a similar situation with Xavier University, though as a private institution the
corporations are far more dominant. Xavier has forty-four trustees and four trustees emeritus
most of whom are corporate executives. Xavier includes on its board some members with ties
to corporations outside the Cincinnati area, such as Katherine S. Napier, a consultant who was
formerly a senior vice president of McDonald’s Corporation based in Hinsdale, Illinois. There
is also Dr. John C. Lechleiter, president and COO of Eli Lilly and Co. based in Indianapolis,
- 31 -
Indiana. The majority, though, come from Cincinnati area corporations and, again, the largest
corporations are well represented.
Xavier University Board of Trustees
Trustees with Business Connections to Cincinnati Region
Trustee
Phyllis Adams, CEO
Richard L. Antoine, Global H.R. Officer
Gordon F. Brunner, Ret. Chief Tech Officer
Robert H. Castellini, Chairman
Corporation
Professional Data Resources
The Procter & Gamble Co.
The Procter & Gamble Co.
Castellini Co.
Federated Department Stores
(Macy’s)
The Midland Co.
Bistro Group
Deloitte & Touche
Arthritis Center
Gallagher Enterprises
Howard & Bodnar Co.
Joseph Auto Group
Keating, Kuething & Kiekamp
Cintas Corporation
The Kroger Co.
Ohio Casualty Insurance Co.
Bartlett and Co.
Thomas G. Cody, Vice Chairman
Michael J. conaton, Vice Chairman
Robert A. Conway, Chairman
Gerald J. DeBrunner, Ret. Vice Chairman
Dr. Salem Foad
Charles P. Gallagher, Chairman and CEO
Barbara J. Howard
Gregory G. Joseph, Vice-President
Donald P. Kiekamp, Senior Partner
Robert J. Kohlhepp, Vice Chairman
W. Rodney McMullen, Vice Chairman
Ralph S. Michael III, Pres. And COO
James A. Miller, Chairman and CEO
James A. Pichler, Ret. Chairman & CEO
Chair of the Xavier Board of Trustees
The Kroger Co.
Janet Butler Reid, Principal Partner
Joseph L. Rippe, Principal Partner
Robert A.Sullivan, President and CEO
Thomas L. Williams, President
William J. Keating, Ret. Chair & Publisher
Trustee Emeritus
Lawrence A. Lester, Ret. Chairman
Trustee Emeritus
Vincent H. Beckman
Trustee Emeritus
Global Lead Management Consulting
Rippe and Kingston Co.
Fifth Third Bank
North American Properties
Cincinnati Enquirer
E.W. Scripps Co.
Beckman, Well, Shepardson
Xavier University Board of Trustees
http://www.xu.edu/about/board.cfm
- 32 -
Example: YWCA
Just as they sit on college and university boards, corporate executives also tend to play a large role
in philanthropies and charities. Corporate support for philanthropic and charitable organizations
creates an appearance of concern for the community and the underprivileged. As with their
presence in higher education, involvement with charity helps to legitimize corporate control of
the economy while extending the corporations’ influence in society.
We might take as an example the Cincinnati YWCA. The YWCA has thirty-eight board
members many of whom hold positions at other local institutions such as Children’s Hospital,
the Cincinnati Zoo, or the Jewish Hospital. Many of the board members, however, are corporate
executives of the dominant Cincinnati corporations.
YMCA Board Members
Partial List, Those with Cincinnati Corporate Connections
Board Member
Jean Coggan, Dir. Community Relations
Myrita Craig, Vice President for Small Business
Mildred Adams Curtis, Senior V.P, Legal and HR
Heidi Jark, Vice President, Foundation Office
M. Denise Kuprionis, Vice Pres., Legal
Carol Talbot, Assistant. Director of Corporate
Contributions and Community Relations
Corporation
Federated Department Strs (Macy’s)
Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber
Luxottica Retail
Fifth Third Bank
The E.W. Scripps Company
Procter & Gamble
YWCA Board of Directors
http://www.ywca.org/site/pp.asp?c=agLGKXNOE&b=281565
While only six corporate executives sit on the 38-member Board of the YWCA, because of the
power and money of those corporations, and their ability to bestow or withhold their approval
and their funding to the Y’s projects, their voice will be significant in many of the organization’s
deliberations.
The Corporate Elite and Culture
Cultural institutions are important for corporations. Corporate participation in the boards
of museums, orchestras, and theaters not only lends status and prestige to corporation board
members and executives, but it also legitimizes corporate domination of the society in general.
High culture claims descent from the great periods of Western civilization: from ancient Greece
and Rome, from the religious art of the medieval period, from the European Renaissance, and
from the schools of modern European and American art. To support culture is to identify oneself
with the ruling classes of earlier periods, with their knowledge and their power. A neoclassical
building like that which houses the Cincinnati Art Museum says of the city’s contemporary
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rulers: we are the Greeks and Romans of today. A Contemporary Arts Center says that even
old money is not behind the times. Culture legitimates, aggrandizes, and embellishes corporate
power.
Example: The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
Support for the symphony, which plays at Music Hall, is not only an investment in a local
cultural institution but also represents a stake in the preservation of historic structures in Overthe-Rhine as part of the planned corporate revamping of that neighborhood. The Cincinnati
Symphony Orchestra recently chose new officers and members to its board of directors. The
new board members include A.B. Cruz, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for The
E.W. Scripps Company; Tom Hardy, President and CEO of the Unity Financial life Insurance
Company; and Bruce Lee, an officer of Fifth Third Bancorp and vice president of its Commercial
Banking Division. (Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra news release July 12, 2007. See: http://www.
cincinnatisymphony.org/AboutUs/boards.asp)
Example: The Cincinnati Art Museum
Like the symphony, the Cincinnati Art Museum is both a center of and a symbol of high culture
and dominated by the major Cincinnati corporations. The Museum has a board of directors and
several other important boards that influence policy. One of these is the corporate council. Once
again, among the nine members of the council we find several of the most important local and
regional corporations.
Cincinnati Art Museum Corporate Council
Council Member
Thomas G. Cody, Chairman
John F. Barrett, Vice-Chairman
Jeff Chapman
Paul W. Chellgren (Retired)
James L. Mahon
Craig F. Maier,
Valerie L. Newell
Christopher R. Sehring,
Timothy E. Stautberg,
George H. Vincent, Esq.
J. Philip Vollmer,
W. Breck Weigel,
John P. Williams Jr., (Retired)
Corporation
Federated Department Stores/Macy’s
Western & Southern Financial Group
Fifth Third Bank
Ashland, Inc.
Bartlett & Co.
Frisch’s Restaurants, Inc.
RiverPoint Capital Management
Local 12 WKRC
The E. W. Scripps Company
Dinsmore & Shohl LLP
JPV Investment Company
Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP
Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce
Cincinnati Art Museum, Annual Report
http://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/absolutenm/articlefiles/61-reporttothecommunity_2006.pdf
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Example: The Art Academy of Cincinnati
The Art Academy, recently relocated to Over-the-Rhine, stands at the frontline in the battle
over gentrification between developers and community groups. The Art Academy Board reflects
corporate concern not only with the arts but also with urban real estate. Members of the board
include Catherine O. Bradford, vice president PNC Advisors; Mary Lynn Ferguson-McHugh,
president, Family Care P&G; and Paul L. Reynolds, Executive Vice President and General
Counsel of Fifth Third Bank. (http://www.artacademy.edu/AF_Trustees.html)
Example: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Museum
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Museum represents one of the most
interesting examples of corporate power in Cincinnati since it brings together elites from many
sectors of society. Economic power joins political influence, intellectual status and religious
prestige in heading up an institution that while dedicated to the concept of freedom embodies
at the same time the reality of corporate domination. While a black minister, Damon Lynch,
Jr., nominally heads this institution, the real power lies with the corporations that paid the
construction costs, created the endowments, and exert their influence to shape a museum that
defines freedom in classic terms of representative democracy, the free market place, and equality
of opportunity—terms that in practice have meant inequality, poverty and oppression to so many
in Cincinnati. (See the discussion of the Freedom Center in Part 4 below.)
The museum has 37 board members, some of whom are honorary, and includes well known
figures not only from the corporate world but also from the African American and Jewish
communities. We list here only some of the directors to show the role of the corporations that
represents the money power which will always be powerful and often decisive.
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National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Museum
Corporate Members of the Board of Directors
Cororation
The Procter & Gamble Company
Board Member
John Pepper, Former Chairman and CEO
Co-Chair
Ken Robinson, Vice President, Finance
Treasurer
Paul Alexander, Vice President Advertising
David L. Calhoun, Chairman & CEO
Phil Castellini
Richard K. Davis, CEO
James Orr, President & CEO
James R. Stengel, Global Marketing Officer,
Charles Whitehead, Retired President
The Procter & Gamble Company
Campbell Soup Company
VNU – Neilson Corporation
Cincinnati Reds, Dir. Operations
U.S. Bancorp
Convergys
The Procter & Gamble Company
Ashland Oil Foundation
Jim Wiseman, Vice President, External Affairs
Toyota Motor Engineering &
Manufacturing North America, Inc
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Museum – Board of Directors
http://www.freedomcenter.org/about/board-of-directors/
As can be seen from this table, ten of the 37 directors of the museum come from powerful
Cincinnati or Ohio corporations. Since these corporations provide significant contributions to
the museum, it can be expected that their board members will be quite influential.
Example: The Urban League
Corporations work to control the entire metropolitan area, including its African American
community. Of all African American organizations in the United States the Urban League is
everywhere the most dominated by corporations and Cincinnati is no exception. The Cincinnati
Urban League Board of Trustees though small with only five members includes three major
area corporations. Corporate influence over African American organizations is a key social and
political task in a city like Cincinnati where blacks make up about half the population.
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Urban League Board Members
Board Member
Mark D. Walton
Dave Dillon
Bradley Hunkler
Daniel R. Groneck
Richard L. Moore, Esq.
Urban League Board Members
http://www.gcul.org/Employees_Board.html
Corporation
Fifth Third Bank
The Kroger Company
Western & Southern Financial Group
U.S. Bank NA (Part of US Bancorp)
Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease LLP
Corporations as an Organized Force
Each corporation by itself with its enormous economic resources and large and highly trained
staff plays a large role in the city. Corporations, however, are even more powerful when they form
coalitions and alliance to influence the economic and social policy of the city, the county or the
region. The diagram below shows how Cincinnati corporations influence or control the major
business coalitions in the city.
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In most cities it is the Chamber of Commerce which acts as the voice of corporate power. The
Chamber’s Board of Directors has 16 members and 33 Additional Directors as well as a fourmember Senior Council. The Senior Council’s four members include three from the dominant
locally-based corporations.
Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber
Senior Council Members
Senior Council Member
Robert L. Hoverson, President
Charlotte R. Otto, Global External Relations
Janet B. Reid, Managing Partner
George A. Schaefer, Jr., President and CEO
Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, Senior Council
http://www.cincinnatichamber.com/usaccc_b.aspx?id=523
Corporation
Provident Bank
Procter & Gamble
Global Lead Management Consulting
Fifth Third Bank
While Chambers of Commerce often play the role of the principal voice of corporate power in
a city or region this has not been true in Cincinnati. For whatever reason, perhaps because the
Chamber’s leadership is too large and contains too many middle- or light-weight players, it has
not functioned as the corporations’ policy vehicle.
Cincinnati’s business elite has therefore created other organizations to play that role:
the Cincinnati Business Committee (CBC), Downtown Cincinnati Incorporated (DCI) and
the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC). These three organizations,
created by the largest and most powerful corporations in Cincinnati, have come to dominate city
planning and development.
Cincinnati Business Committee (CBC)
The Cincinnati Business Committee was established in 1977 with a board made up of 25 of
Cincinnati’s major companies. Sociologists have described CBC as “a typical land-based elite
with stakes in the exchange-value of the built environment, the CBC has always given priority to
downtown development issues.” All of its members at that time were white male executives and
the CBC did not admit its first African American member until 1994 and its first woman until
1998. (Leibovitz and Salmon, 1999)
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Cincinnati Business Committee
Board of Directors (2007)
Corporation
Chiquita Banana
Western Southern Financial Group
Cincinnati Enquirer
GE Avaition
Castellini Cos.
Cox Financial Corp./Cincinnati Bell Inc.
Kroger Co.
Cintas Corp.
UNIFI Cos.
Sencorp
Procter & Gamble Co.
American Financial Group Inc.
E.W. Scipps Co.
Craig Maier,
Duke Energy Corp.
Ohio National Financial Services
Convergys Corp.
National City Bank
Fifth Third Bancorp
Cincinnati Financial Corp.
U.S. Bank
PNC Bank
AK Steel
North American Properties
Toyota Motor Engineering and Mfg. N.A.
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber
CBC Member
Fernando Aguirre
John Barrett
Margaret Buchanan
Scott Donnelly
Bob Castellini
Phillip Cox
David Dillon
Scott Farmer
John Jacobs
George Juilfs
A.G. Lafley
Carl Lindner
Kenneth Lowe
Frisch’s Restaurants Inc.
Sandra Meyer
David O’Maley
James Orr
T. Michael Price
George Schaefer
John Schiff
James Schwab
Replacement to be named
(Formerly was John Taylor)
James Wainscott
Thomas Williams
James Wiseman
Nancy Zimpher
Ellen van der Horst
CBC Board of Directors
Business Courier, June 22, 2006. At: 222.bizjournalis.com/Cincinnati/stories/2007/06/25/store.html…
The Cincinnati Business Committee brings together all of the largest corporations in Cincinnati
and the region in order to attempt to influence city and county governments and to determine
the long-range economic, social and political planning in the area.
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Downtown Cincinnati Incorporated (DCI)
Downtown Cincinnati Incorporated (DCI) is as the name indicates focused on the city’s
downtown area. The Cincinnati Business Committee took the initiative to found DCI in 1993
with the goal of developing Cincinnati’s downtown and promoting the growth of business and
residence there to make it not only the center of the city but the center of the broader region. The
City of Cincinnati funded the group for its first three years.
The DCI board includes not only powerful corporations like Procter and Gamble, Fifth Third
Bank and Macy’s, but also representatives of city and county government, some downtown
businesses and several important law firms.
Downtown Cincinnati Incorporated
Board of Director
Board Member
Corporation or Government Body
Mario San Marco, President and CEO
Chair
Eagle Realty Group
Mark Mallory, Mayor
Honorary Chair
City of Cincinnati
Patricia Mann Smitson, Partner-in-Charge
Vice Chair
Thompson Hine LLP
James C. Ellerhorst, Managing Partner
Treasurer
Deloitte Tax LLP
Martine’ R. Dunn, Partner
Secretary
Baker & Hostetler LLP
Pat DeWine, Commissioner
Hamilton County Board of Commissioners
Milton R. Dohoney, Jr., City Manager
City of Cincinnati
Monica Donath Kohnen, Partner
Graydon Head & Ritchey LLP
David N. Ginsburg, President and CEO
Downtown Cincinnati Inc.
Melvin J. Gravely, II, Managing Director
Institute for Entrepreneurial Thinking
Louise Hughes, Director,
The Procter & Gamble Company
Ohio Government & Community Relations
Richard M. Kimbler, Principal
North Pointe Group
Steven G. Leeper, President and CEO
Cincinnati Center City Development Corp
(3CDC)
Laura L. Long, Executive Director
Cincinnati Business Committee
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(Chart continues on next page)
John Luken, Partner
Dinsmore & Shohl LLP
William J. Moran
Senior Vice President, Corporate Facilities
Charlotte R. Otto
Global External Relations Officer
Fifth Third Bank
The Procter & Gamble Company
Steve Richter, Director, Asset Services
CB Richard Ellis
Jack Rouse, CEO
Jack Rouse Associates, Inc.
W. N. (Nick) Sanders, President
Tavern Restaurant Group, Inc.
Ellen van der Horst, President and CEO
Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber
Cynthia Ray Walker,
Vice President, Area Research
Macy’s, Inc. (Federated Department
Stores)
Downtown Cincinnati Incorporated, Board of Director
http://www.downtowncincinnati.com/board
Much of DCI’s activity focuses on creating a safe and welcoming atmosphere and promoting the
image of downtown, and it is concerned with economic development.
Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC)
The Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC), founded in July 2003, focuses
its work on determining the future of Cincinnati’s downtown and the surrounding area. Again,
the same large corporations play a central role in 3CDC as seen in the composition of its board,
though here important public institutions, local development corporations, lawyers and realtors
have a larger part.
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Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC)
Board of Directors
3CDC Board Member
Corporation
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Med Ctr.
James M. Anderson, Pres. and CEO
Western & Southern Financial Group
John F. Barrett, Pres. and CEO
Ex-Interim Dir. Of 3CDC
Thomas C. Blinn
Boorn Partners
John P. Born, Managing Partner
Towne Properties
Neil K. Bortz, Partner
Cincinnati Enquirer
Margaret E. Buchanan, Pres. and Publisher
Dinsmore & Shohl LLP
Calvin D. Buford, Partner
Cincinnati Bell
John F. Cassidy, Pres. And CEO
Castellini Company
Robert H. Castellini, Chairman
Kroger Company
David Dillon, Chairman and CEO
GE Aviation
Scott Donnelly, Pres. and CEO
Federated Department Strs, Inc. (Macy’s)
Karen Hoguet, Exec. VP and CFO
The Procter & Gamble Co.
A.G. Lafley, Chair., Pres. and CEO
3CDC
Stephen G. Leeper, Pres. and CEO
American Financial Group
Carl H. Lindner, Chairman
African American Chamber of Commerce
Seven Love, Pres. and CEO
The E.W. Scripps Company
Kenneth W. Lowe, Pres and CEO
Duke Energy of Ohio & Kentucky
Sandra Meyer, Pres. and CEO
The Ohio Casualty Group
Ralph S. Michael III, Pres. and CEO
Convergys Corporation
James F. Orr, Chairman of the Board
The Kroger Co.
Joseph A. Pichler, Vice-Chair, Ex. Chair
and Ceo
Global Lead Management Consulting, Inc.
Jack Rouse Associates
Fifth Third Bancorp
Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber
Toyota Motor Engineering & Mfg of N.A.
Janet B. Reid, Pres.
Jack Rouse, CEO
George A. Schaefer, Jr. Chairman and CEO
Ellen van der Horst, Pres. and CEO
James M. Wiseman, V.P. External Affairs
Federated Department Stores (Macy’s)
James M. Zimmerman, Ret. Chair and
CEO
University of Cincinnati
Nancy L. Zimpher, President
3CDC Board of Directors
www.3cdc.org
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3CDC is a private corporate-based development group “created to accelerate development
activities in Center City Cincinnati as recommended by the Cincinnati Economic Development
Task Force.” 3CDC’s specific goal for Over-the-Rhine is to “revitalize Over-the-Rhine as a
vibrant, economically and racially diverse mixed use neighborhood.” (www.3cdc.org).
While Over-the-Rhine’s population is mostly African American, there are few black members of
the 3CDC board. Those blacks that are on the board represent not the neighborhood’s African
American population but rather corporate interests. For example, Janet Reid, whose name
appears on many Cincinnati boards, might be an important businesswoman and leader, but her
presence on the board serves principally to strengthen the claim by the corporations and civic
institutions that they have included African Americans.
Cincinnati then is dominated by a handful of corporations— Procter & Gamble, Kroger, Macy’s/
Federated Department Stores, Fifth Third Bancorp, Western and Southern Financial, Chiquita
Brands International, American Financial Corp—which dominate the region’s economic, social,
cultural and political life. Among them all, Procter and Gamble has historically been and remains
today the predominant power in the city. Through the Cincinnati Business Committee (CBC),
Downtown Cincinnati Incorporated (DCI), and the Cincinnati Center City Development
Corporation (3CDC), these corporations act to influence the shape of local government,
legislation, and policy. We turn next to look at the role of corporations in the media and politics.
- 43 -
Part II
Corporate Power in the Media
and Politics
While the great corporations dominate the economy and social institutions of Cincinnati their
control over the media and politics is less direct. National and multinational corporations, not
Cincinnati-based corporations, dominate the Cincinnati media. Politics, on the other hand, is
dominated by Cincinnati-based corporations and wealthy individuals from the area.
Cincinnati’s Media
Today the media in the United States are controlled by a shrinking oligopoly of multinational
media corporations that in the words of a famous book and video shape the news and
“manufacture consent.” Print and electronic media in the United States are held in the hands of
about 25 corporations. According to the Fortune Five Hundred list the top publishing companies
are R.R. Donnelly & Sons, Gannett, Mc-Graw-Hill, Tribune, Washington Post, New York
Times, Reader’s Digest Assn., Scholastic, McClatchy, American Greetings, Donnelly, Dow Jones,
Deluxe, Meredity and Belo. The top ten media corporations of 2007 according to the Fortune
Five Hundred list are Time Warner, Walt Disney, News Corp, CBS, Viacom, Clear channel
Communications, Live Nation, Warner Music Group, E.W. Scripps, Regal Entertainment
Group, Univision Communications and AMC entertainment.
This handful of media conglomerates have bought up local newspapers, radio stations and
television channels. Those corporations own the most important media in the United States.
With a small group of giant media corporations controlling publishing houses, local periodicals
and the electronic media in all of its forms it becomes increasingly difficult for other voices to be
heard.
Cincinnati is no exception to these national developments. The newspapers, radio stations,
television and much of its Internet are controlled by multinational media corporations. Most
of these corporations have boards of directors linked to national and international banks and
corporations rather than to Cincinnati-based companies.
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NEWSPAPERS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnati’s major newspapers, the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Cincinnati Post, both belong
to multinational corporations, respectively Gannett and E.W. Scripps. The Cincinnati Enquirer,
after a series of owners from the 1950s to the 1970s that included both Carl Lindner and
the E.W. Scripps Corporation, eventually became part of the Gannett Corporation in 1979.
Gannett is a multinational corporation that publishes 85 daily newspapers in the United States
including USA Today, as well as 1,000 non-daily publications. Altogether, Gannett has a U.S.
circulation of 7.2 million with USA Today having 2.3 million readers. The company also owns
USA Weekend which is carried by 600 local papers reaching 23.0 million readers. Gannett is the
largest newspaper publisher in the United States. In addition to its U.S. holdings, Gannett owns
Newsquest in the United Kingdom which operates 17 daily newspapers and 300 non-daily
publications. Newsquest is the second largest regional newspaper publisher in the U.K.
In addition to print media, Gannett operates 23 television stations in the United States which
reach more than 20.1 million households. Gannett daily newspapers and television stations also
operate many local internet sites which claim an online audience of 23.2 individual visitors or
about 14.8 percent of the internet audience. Gannett also has several other media and marketing
services such as PointRoll, Planet Discover, CareerBuilder, Classified Venture, Topix.net,
Shermans Travel, Shop Local, and 4INFO.
(Columbia Journalism Review Resources at: http://cjrarchives.org/tools/owners/gannett.asp)
The Cincinnati Enquirer with a circulation of 225,000 daily and 332,010 on Sundays is the
largest and most important of the local newspapers.
The Post and The E.W. Scripps Company
The Cincinnati Post with a circulation of 55,800 (weekdays) and 79,903 on Saturdays is owned
by E.W. Scripps, a multinational media corporation. Scripps owns daily and community
newspapers in 18 markets as well as the Washington-based Scripps Media Center which is
home to the Scripps Howard News Service. Scripps Television Station Group includes six ABCaffiliated stations, three NBC affiliates and one independent. Scripps also operates broadcast
television stations in Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Phoenix, Tampa, Baltimore, Kansas City,
Mo., West Palm Beach, Fla., Tulsa, Okla., and Lawrence, Kan. Scripps is also the owner of
United Media, a global licensing and syndication company which distributes Peanuts, Dilbert
and about 150 other features and characters.
Scripps also has interactive internet shopping sites that include Shopzilla, uSwitch and
UpMyStreet. Shopzilla sells the products of 65,000 merchants while uSwitch allows British
consumers to compare and to switch rates on gas, electricity, home phone, digital television,
- 45 -
broadband, credit cards, and secured and unsecured personal loans. Scripps networks includes
lifestyle television networks such as HGTV, Food Network, DIY Network, FINE LIVING,
GAC and HGTVPro. Scripps Networks websites include HGTV.com, FoodNetwork.com,
DIYnetwork.com, fineliving.com and gactv.com. Scripps Networks programming is viewed
in more than 170 countries. (Columbia Journalism Review resources at: http://www.cjr.org/
resources/)
The Post closed Dec. 31, 2007.
Multinational not Locally-Based Corporations
As multinational corporations, Gannett and The E.W. Scripps Company both have corporate
boards that reflect their national and international concerns rather than connections to
Cincinnati. While there are not strong economic and organizational ties between the media and
the locally based corporations, there is nonetheless often a strong corporate commonality and
community of interest. Since Cincinnati is its home base, the E.W. Scripps company takes an
active role in the social, policy and political organizations of the local elite. The Enquirer, though
now part of a multinational corporation, also plays a significant role on local civic boards.
The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Post generally both take conservative positions on politics
and corporate positions on issues of county and city policy and development issues. Both
newspapers present limited news coverage, offer few points of view from liberal or left-ofcenter commentators, and generally neglect in depth analysis of local, regional or national
issues. In general it has been possible for the Cincinnati-based corporations to count upon
the multinational media’s local affiliates to support the local corporate agenda. This may be
a reflection of the importance of local corporations’ advertising, but it also represents the
convergence of outlook between local powers-that-be and media executives in the local
subsidiaries and affiliates.
Cincinnati CityBeat
Cincinnati CityBeat is an independent entertainment newspaper with a circulation of 50,000
free copies. Financially backed by local businessman Thomas Schiff and co-founded by John Fox
the CityBeat tends to take more liberal positions than the Enquirer or the Post. CityBeat exerts
an important influence on youth and liberal public opinion in Cincinnati but is not an important
force in the corporate or political world.
Cincinnati Beacon
The Cincinnati Beacon, a monthly tabloid, began publishing in 2007 offering an alternative voice
and a critique of Cincinnati politics. Founded by Jason Haap and Justin Jeffre, the Beacon first
appeared as a blog and then as a print publication with the aim of offering a critical perspective
on city politics.
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RADIO
Cincinnati has 37 radio stations but is dominated by two national media corporations, namely
Clear Channel and Bonneville International, both with strongly conservative views.
Clear Channel owns six Cincinnati radio stations making it the dominant force in that
medium. Established in 1972 as Clear Channel Communications, the company was until
recently dominated by the Mays family of Texas. Under their direction, Clear Channel gained a
reputation for its right-of-center politics and its conservative talk radio commentators. In 2006
it was bought by two private equity firms, Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners, a
firm that engage in buyouts as a business strategy.
Bonneville International, is a broadcasting company wholly owned by the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints (LDS Church or Mormons) and based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Bonneville
has 3 radio stations in Chicago, Illinois; three in Washington D.C., three in Seattle, Washington,
four in Phoenix, Arizona; four in St. Louis, Missouri; four in Cincinnati; and eight in Salt Lake
City, Utah. (http://www.bonnint.com/section-e.php?p=2-0)
Ten of Cincinnati’s radio stations are owned by national media corporations with conservative
politics. Most of the other stations are owned by a number of small businesses, churches, and
universities and while they influence public opinion, they are not important players in the
local economy or politics. The existence of the university based stations as well as independent
channels does provide some space for alternative views on local radio.
However, as described here, the two conservative corporate radio groups are dominant. While
there are not strong economic or organizational ties between these corporations and Cincinnatibased corporations, once again as with the print media, there exists a strong sense of common
social and political values. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_International)
WAIF – Community Radio
The one exception to the corporate-controlled radio of Cincinnati is WAIF Community Radio
owned by the not-for-profit Stepchild Radio of Cincinnati, Inc. Membership in WAIF is
open to those who make a $15 annual contribution. Programming reflects Cincinnati’s diverse
communities.
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TELEVISION
Cincinnati has 11 local television channels almost all of which are corporate owned. The
corporate owners are:
Channel
WLWT – Channel 5
WCPO – Channel 9
WKRC – Channel 12
WKRC-DT2 – CinCW
WXIX - Channel 19
WOTH-LP – Channel 25
W36DG-LP
WBQC-CA – Channel 38
WCET
WCVN-TV – Channel 54
WSTR-TV
Affiliation
NBC
ABC
CBS
The CW
Fox
AI/UATV
TBN
Independent
PBS
KET/PBS
MyNetworkTV
Chart adapted from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Media_in_Cincinnati
Corporate Owner
Hearst-Argyle
Scripps-Howard
Providence Equity Partners
Run on WKRC
Raycom Media
Owned by WBQC-CA
Sinclair Broadcasting Group
Once again it should be noted that there are not strong economic or organizational ties between
local Cincinnati corporations and the television channels, the networks or the corporations
that own these channels. Nevertheless, as large national or multinational operations, the media
corporations that own local television often share a common corporate outlook on many national,
regional and local issues.
Much of the local online media is affiliated with one or another of the local newspapers, radio
stations, or television channels. Those who subscribe to cable or satellite TV receive programming
mostly from corporate media sources.
Cincinnati WCET Channel 48 – PBS Affiliate
Cincinnati’s public broadcasting affiliate, WCET (Channel 48) has a board that includes
many by corporate directors. The board has 16 members, four of whom are from the largest
corporations, two from law firms, and the rest with backgrounds in education or as private
consultants.
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Cincinnati WCET Channel 48 – PBS Affiliate – Board of Trustees
Board Member
Corporation
Bryan Dunn, President
Chairman
Western & Southern Agency Group of
Western & Southern Financial Group
Jerome C. Kathman, President & CEO
Vice Chair
Lybby Perszyk Kathman, Inc.
Susan Howarth, President and CEO
Greater Cincinnati Television Educational
Foundation
Dawn Bertsche, Vice-President
Secretary
Bradley R. Mays, Vice President – Tax
Treasurer
Federated Department Stores, Inc.
[Macy’s]
David Hoguet
Assistant Secretary
Private consultant
Lee A. Carter
Community volunteer
Senator Richard H. Finan, Attorney at Law
Calfee, Halter & Griswold & Richd H.
Finan, Atty
Michele L. Heath, Senior Manager
KPMG, LLP
Marcia R. Humes
Community volunteer
Dr. Stanley Kapan, Professor Emeritus
University of Cincinnati, College of
Medicine, Kaplan Foundation
Lorrence T. Kellar, Vice Pres., Retail Dev.
Continental Properties
Dr. Mitchel D. Livingston, Vice President
University of Cincinnati
Maria G. Molina, Latin America Dev. Mgr.
Procter & Gamble
Robert A. Sullivan, President
Fifth Third Bank
Miriam E. West,
Private consultant
WCET Website, Board of Trustees
http://www.cetconnect.org/about/board.asp
As shown here the largest Cincinnati corporations hold four of the sixteen seats on WCET
board of trustees.
- 49 -
Media, Society and Politics in Cincinnati
Many people in Cincinnati as around the country get their news from their local newspaper, the
Enquirer which is owned by Gannett, from radio that is very likely a local Clear Channel station,
and from the local affiliate of one of the major networks or from FOX or CNN. These powerful
conservative corporate national and multinational media dominate the print media and the
airways. Since the media are mostly multinational and based in other cities, it is difficult for local
opponents of the corporate agenda to put forward their positions. Cincinnati CityBeat, WAIF,
local National Public Radio (NPR) affiliates based at local university campuses, the local cable
access TV channel, and some local alternative websites and blogs such as the Cincinnati Beacon
represent the alternative channels available for dissident viewpoints.
Cincinnati Politics
Historians and social scientists have often noted that in the United States while the corporate
elite rules it often prefers that people from the upper middle class or the middle class govern.
In general, few members of the corporate elite run for public office or take a large role in
political parties. This distance between the corporate elite and the political leadership has many
advantages for the real rulers. Like the puppet master in his black clothing standing behind the
screen, in American politics the elite disappear from view making it difficult to identify their role
and to hold them accountable. If things should go well, the elite may step forward to claim some
of the credit and rewards, but if things go badly, they can simply let the political puppets face the
crowd. While political parties and candidates may come and go, providing the public with the
illusion of change, the great corporate interests tend to remain in place behind the scenes.
The corporate elite are able to pull the strings in several ways. First, they often have a hand
in the political party organization either directly or through political operators who are often
attorneys. Second, the corporate elite puts up much of the money that goes to finance political
campaigns and candidates. While we are dealing here with Cincinnati politics, we should note
that when Cincinnati’s corporate elite donate to the national political parties they also increase
their leverage of the state and local party organizations. Third, the corporate elite have economic
leverage that they can bring to bear on city, county, state and even the federal government,
pressuring politicians to accede to their demands.
The corporate elite have several economic levers they can use to put pressure on city or county
government. The banks and corporations use their influence with the civic boards and other
institutions in order to create powerful social pressure on city and county government. Pressure,
however, doesn’t always work. Banks and corporate boards and CEOS can threaten to disinvest
by moving corporate offices out of the downtown area or closing production plants in the region.
On the other hand they can promise new downtown development or new plants and offices in
the area if they get what they want. Ultimately banks and corporations can use their influence
with local financial institutions and bond ratings agencies to affect the city’s credit rating though
that is a risky strategy for all involved.
- 50 -
The Corporations, the Parties and the Candidates
Cincinnati’s corporations and those that own and run them use their money to influence politics
at all levels. Many corporations, their owners and managers will hedge their bets, giving money
to both the Republican and Democratic parties. American Financial Group, headed by Carl
Lindner, gives money to both parties, though much more to the Republicans.
American Financial Group Financial Contributions
Election
Cycle
Total
Democrats
Republicans
% to Dems
% to Repubs
2008
2006
2004
$391,300
$721,150
$964,051
$12,050
$10,300
$31,686
$379,250
$708,350
$932,365
3%
1%
3%
97%
98%
97%
2002
2000
1998
1996
1994
1992
$2,260,308
$1,671,685
$1,284,595
$1,163,565
$1,114,340
$921,700
$343,200
$677,750
$286,750
$179,450
$524,570
$17,500
$1,917,108
$993,935
$997,845
$984,115
$589,770
$904,200
15%
41%
22%
15%
47%
2%
85%
60%
78%
85%
53%
98%
1990
TOTAL
$80,170
$10,572,864
$21,490
$2,104,746
$58,680
$8,465,618
27%
20%
73%
80%
The numbers in the graph above are based on contributions of $200 or more from PACs and individuals to federal
candidates and from PAC, individual and soft money donors to political parties, as reported to the Federal Election
Commission. While election cycles are shown in charts as 1996, 1998, 2000 etc. they actually represent two-year
periods. For example, the 2002 election cycle runs from January 1, 2001 to December 31, 2002. Data for the current
election cycle was released by the Federal Election Commission on Monday, October 29, 2007. NOTE: Soft money
contributions were not publicly disclosed until the 1991-92 election cycle and are not allowed in the 2003-2004
cycle. (Center for Responsive Politics at http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.asp?ID=D000000121&Type=P)
P&G Global Government Relations and P&G PAC
Corporations often form their own political action committees (PACs) to support the political
program, candidates and parties that will be represent their interests in elections. Procter &
Gamble, for example, has a Global Government Relations (GGR) program that includes its
“P&G Political Action Committee, strategic grassroots initiatives and issue advocacy efforts.”
The P&G PAC was first established in 1992 to encourage employees to support the company’s
lobbying efforts. While employees contribute their money to the fund, it is company board
members and executives who run it. “The PAC is governed by a set of bylaws and supervised by
a diverse board of Company senior managers, US Government Relations personnel, and Legal
- 51 -
counsel.” While contributions are voluntary, employees may feel under some pressure to follow
the company line and to make contributions to the PAC.
P&G PAC Motivation: The Company Bottom Line
P&G PAC’s website explains that “P&G participates in the political process to help shape public
policy that has a direct impact on the Company.” P&G Global Government Relations program
engages in lobbying. “P&G’s Global Government Relations team (P&G GGR) represents the
Company’s point of view in Washington, DC, in U.S. state capitols and in key country capitols
around the world. Working with the businesses, P&G GGR focuses on legislative and public
policy issues that impact the Company’s bottom line.”
The P&G GGR also engages directly in electoral politics. “P&G engages in the political process
by providing financial support to state ballot initiatives and issue advocacy campaigns that have a
direct impact on the business.” P&G PAC’s financial contributions are significant. In the 2006 election cycle P&G PAC gave
$166,500 to candidates in federal races running for office in states and districts throughout the
country. While P&G PAC gave most of its money to Republicans, it also supported Democrats
in some cases.
P&G PAC Financial Contributions
U.S. House of Representatives Candidates from Ohio
Candidate
Blasdel, Chuck
Boehner, John
Chabot, Steve
Gillmor, Paul
LaTourette, Steve
Padgett, Joy
Pryce, Deborah
Regula, Ralph
District
OH-6
OH-8
OH-1
OH-5
OH-14
OH-18
OH-15
OH-16
Party
Republican
Republican
Republican
Republican
Republican
Republican
Republican
Republican
Contribution
$2,000.00
$3,500.00
$9,000.00
$2,000.00
$1,000.00
$5,000.00
$4,000.00
$1,000.00
2006 P&G PAC Contributions, at:
http://www.pgpac.com/page.asp?g=pg&content=06_pac_contributions&parent=PGPAC
P& G PAC also contributed $2,000 to the 2006 Senate campaign of George Voinovich,
Republican candidate from Ohio.
- 52 -
P&G PAC State and Local Contributions
In addition, the P&G PAC contributed another $62,150 to Ohio state and local races in 2006,
again supporting mostly Republicans but also some Democrats. For example the P&G PAC
gave $10,000 to the campaign of Ken Blackwell, Republican candidate for governor. At the same
time, in the local elections, P&G gave $2,000 to Mark Mallory, the Democratic Party candidate
for mayor of Cincinnati and $4,000 to David Pepper, the Democratic Party candidate for the
Hamilton County Board of Commissioners.
P&G PAC also contributes to candidates in races in other several states giving them some
$34,105. The total amount contributed by P&G PAC in 2006 to influence elections at all levels
throughout the country was $260,880. With more than a quarter of a million dollars in play,
P&G PAC represented a significant contributor to local, state and national political campaigns.
P&G also has a separate P&G PAC in the state of Massachusetts where it gives all of its
financial support to Democrats in amounts of under $500 each for a total of $4,300. (P&G
PAC Candidate Contributions, at: http://www.pgpac.com/page.asp?g=pg&content=candidates_
open&parent=pgpac)
P&G Report Cards on Legislators
The P&G PAC website also lists federal and Ohio senators’ and representatives’ votes on key
issues, indicating whether from the P&G PAC’s perspective they voted right or wrong on four
issues. (http://www.pgpac.com/lookup.asp?g=pg) The P&G PAC is particularly concerned that
federal representatives and senators vote for free trade: namely for the Dominican Republic
Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) and the Oman Free Trade Agreement.
P&G PAC supports DR-CAFTA because it will directly benefit the company in that region,
though many human rights groups criticized the proposed treaty because of the failure of Central
American governments to protect workers’ rights and human rights.
A City Council Campaign
Companies such as American Financial Corporation also contribute to local political candidates.
Let’s take, for example the campaign of Christopher Bortz for Cincinnati City Council in 2007.
While is it true that Bortz had 530 contributors to his campaign most of them donating between
$240 and $1,000, corporate contributors were significant among them. Carl Lindner contributed
$1,000 to Bortz’s campaign for council. Carl Lindner III also contributed $1,000 to the same
campaign as did Courtney O’Neill Lindner, David Lindner, Edith Lindner, Martha Lindner, and
Robert Lindner. Betty Lindner gave $500. Frances Pepper, homemaker, also contributed $1,000
to Bortz’s campaign, as did her husband John Pepper former chairman of the board of Procter &
Gamble. A. Lafley, also of P&G, gave $500 on behalf of a PAC. Joseph Pichler, former chair and
CEO of Kroger, contributed $500. Fifth Third Bank Corporation gave $750. Members of the
- 53 -
Castellini family contributed over $2,000 to Bortz. Duke Energy PAC contributed $1,000 and
Convergys PAC contributed $500. The largest contributor to Bortz’s campaign was the Charter
Campaign Committee which gave $10,000 to its party’s candidate.
While it is true that many individuals of more modest means and even three labor unions gave
to Bortz’s campaign, it is clear that he was a candidate endorsed and supported by Cincinnati’s
corporate elite. Aware that tens of thousands of dollars of his campaign contributions came from
several of Cincinnati’s seven most powerful local corporations, Bortz will be likely to lend them
his ear.
Let’s look at the Lindner family contributions to all city council candidates in 2006. The Lindner
family made 55 contributions totaling $50,000 to 11 candidates. Most of the Lindner money
went to Gerald “Jeff ” Berding, Christopher Bortz, and Chris Monzel and Charles Winburn.
Berding received $13,000 from the Lindners while Bortz got a little less than $10,000 and
Charles Winburn received $7,000. Candidates also receiving at least $2,000 from the Lindners
included Laketa Cole, John Cranley, John Eby, Patrick Fischer, Leslie Ghiz, Sam Malone, while
Minette Cooper received $1,000.
In the 2005 mayoral election campaign candidate David Pepper received a total of 2008
individual donations, many of ten or twenty dollars but some much larger donations as well. The
Lindner family gave over $13,000 to David Pepper’s campaign, exceeded only by the $70,000
from Pepper himself. Winner Mark Mallory received 640 contributions, the great majority of
them from small donors, though there several from labor unions and attorneys, and some from
P&G PAC and other major corporations.
The Pepper family which is linked to Procter and Gamble made 33 contributions totaling more
$20,000 to the 2006 city council elections, principally to Berding, Bortz and Ghiz, but also
significantly giving to John Cranley and David Crowley. Pepper money also helped Melanie
Bates, Laketa Cole, Minette Coooper, Brian Garry and Cecil Thomas. (All of the Cincinnati
City Council campaign contributions can be found at: http://city-egov.cincinnati-oh.gov/menu_
ec.html )
The Lindner and Pepper families’ financial contributions represent among the largest amounts
of money raised for political candidates. The Lindners contributed strictly to conservative
candidates while the Peppers contributed to conservative, moderate and liberal candidates.
Republicans, Democrats and Charterites all became beholden to the largest corporations that
dominate Cincinnati’s economy, social life, and politics. The City Council may govern, but the
great corporations will continue to rule. City council members will vote, but the corporations will
be pulling the strings.
- 54 -
Part III
Corporate Power and Social
Classes in Cincinnati
Corporate rule over Cincinnati has resulted in a city, like many American cities, that is deeply
divided by race and class. The relative power of Cincinnati’s corporate elite and the corporations
they head has increased substantially over the past forty years as corporations have grown in
wealth and power and labor union organizations and social movements have declined even more
dramatically.
In the previous sections, we outlined the extent of corporate power in Cincinnati and identified
the major players. In this section, we look at the results of the control this ruling class has over
our city. These results represent more than benign neglect when corporations pay attention only
to shareholders, for if corporations rule and have the greatest influence, they also bear the greatest
responsibility.
The corporate elite has fashioned a world that secures its position and its power and suppresses,
exploits and neglects others. Class power and privilege and the lack of it determine and clearly
mark every aspect of life in the city and the region. The ruling corporate elite of Cincinnati live
differently than the middle class, the working class and the poor. The elite not only have incomes
many times higher than other Cincinnatians, but they also live in different areas, have much
larger and more expensive homes, and send their children to different schools.
But not only do the rich live apart, so do the other classes. Class segregation by neighborhoods
and communities results from those with more money buying larger homes in different
subdivisions, neighborhoods or suburbs, so that the wealthy, the upper middle class, the middle
class, the working class and the poor usually reside in their own separate neighborhoods.
Residential racial segregation also divides white from black in both the city of Cincinnati and in
the suburbs and residential segregation means school segregation. African Americans and whites
also generally attend segregated places of worship, often go to different entertainment events, and
even see different movies.
Cincinnati’s Population, Employment and Social Classes
The Cincinnati metropolitan area, made up of 15 counties in Southern Ohio and Northern
Kentucky, has a population of about two million people. Of those, according to the U.S.
Census Bureau’s 2003 population estimate, about 331,000 live in the city of Cincinnati itself.
- 55 -
Within the city of Cincinnati, African Americans make up 43% of the population while in the
entire metropolitan area they make up only 13.4%. That is, blacks make up 220,000 out of the
metropolitan area’s two million people, but most of them are in Cincinnati itself. (2000 census)
Cincinnati has 1,021,800 people in its regional labor force according to the 2004 estimate.
Only few thousand make up the elite at the top of the corporate hierarchy, though a few tens of
thousands form part of the region’s upper class.
Small Business Owners
Small business owners, those whose companies employ less than 100 people, make up
another several thousand people. Cincinnati has a total of 24,534 firms most of which are
small businesses. The Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce estimates that of its 6,000 members
approximately 50% have fewer than 10 employees and 85% have fewer than 50 employees. The
Chamber then would have at least 5,100 small businesses as members and there must be many
thousands more which have not affiliated. We can estimate that 20,000 Cincinnatians make a
living running their own business, half with less than 10 employees and the great majority with
less than 50. Together with their families small business people must number about 100,000
or 5% of the area’s two million residents. These small business owners join corporate middle
managers, self-employed professionals such as lawyers, and institutional employees such as college
professors in the city’s middle and upper middle classes.
While some Cincinnatians own their own businesses most, however, are working people
employed in industry, services, or by the government.
Cincinnati Metropolitan Area Work Force
Industry
Trade, transportation and utilities
Professional and business services
Government
Educational and health services
Manufacturing
Leisure and hospitality
Financial activities
Construction and Mining
Other services
Information
Total
Number of people
208,100
144,700
133,900
130,300
125,000
102,700
65,000
52,700
42,500
16,300
1,021,800
Adapted from chart at:
http://www.city-data.com/us-cities/The-Midwest/Cincinnati-Economy.html
- 56 -
Clearly most Cincinnatians work for wages and salaries forming part of the working class,
though they often describe themselves as part of the middle class. They work as construction
workers, factory workers, or truck drivers, as service workers in retail sales, hotel employees or
bank tellers, or as government employees such as sanitation workers or school teachers.
Cincinnati’s Largest Employers
Employer
University of Cincinnati
Kroger Company
The Procter & Gamble Company
Toyota Motor Mfg. of N.A., Inc.
Fifth Third Bank
Cincinnati Public Schools
City of Cincinnati
Trihealth, Inc.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Med. Ctr.
Mercy Health Partners
Number of Employees
15,400
13,000
13,000
8,360
7,800
7,335
7,223
7,055
7,029
6,785
Adapted from chart at:
http://www.city-data.com/us-cities/The-Midwest/Cincinnati-Economy.html
A Cincinnati production worker employed in manufacturing made in 2003 on the average
$15.94 per hour which comes to $637.60 per week or $33,155 per year. Many people working in
services and clerical work make much less per hour than manufacturing workers. Consequently
it is not surprising that median household income in Cincinnati in 2003 was only $30,850 with
an average of 2.15 persons per household. This also reflects Cincinnati’s high unemployment rate
of about 6%. (U.S. Censu data at: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/Ranking/2003/
R07T160.htm)
Federal, Ohio and Cincinnati minimum and living wage legislation provide a floor for wages in
the area.
Minimum Wages FEDERAL
Future Effective Date
Minimum Wage per hour
OHIO
2007
July 24, 2008
July 24, 2009
Annual Cost of Living Increase
$5,85
$6.55
$7.25
$6.85 Effective until April 30, 2008
$9.14 with benefits
10.70 without benefits
Cincinnati Living Wage
Various sources.
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The City of Cincinnati living wage applies to all full-time and part-time employees and to
contractors and subcontractors who do business with the city. (Cincinnati living wage: http://
www.cincinnati-oh.gov/cityfinance/pages/-13316-/) Some undocumented immigrant workers,
especially those working in construction may be earning less than the minimum wage.
Deindustrialization and the Decline of Employment in Cincinnati
Cincinnati was once an important industrial city, but the city suffered many vicissitudes in the
nineteenth and early twentieth century that led one industry after another to eventually collapse
and disappear. Once the capital of pork packing, after the Civil War Cincinnati lost out to
Chicago packing companies. Cincinnati’s carriage building industry was once one of the largest
in the country, but lost out to the auto industry that grew up in Detroit in the 1900s. The brewing
industry became a mainstay of the Cincinnati economy, employing thousands of workers, but was
wiped out by prohibition in 1920.
During the past several decades the city’s manufacturing industry has shrunk significantly.
The machine tool industry has virtually disappeared, while the auto and airline industries have
declined. Most of these were higher paying skilled jobs or, if unskilled, many of them were union
jobs with higher wages.
Cincinnati Machine Tool Industry
Cincinnati was the machine tool capital of the world for almost a hundred years. From 1850 to
1930 the machine tool industry made precision interchangeable parts for a variety of industries.
Cincinnati’s plants produced about 13 percent of all machine tools used around the world. At
the industry’s peak around 1930 more than 40 firms employed 15,000 workers. The largest of
the firms was originally called Cincinnati Screw and Tap Company, and later became Cincinnati
Milling Machine and finally Milacron.
Milacron sold its machine-tool unit to Unova, a California company, and closed its headquarters
in Oakley in 1998. At that time Milacron still employed 1,375 workers in Cincinnati. Facing the
possibility of bankruptcy in 2004, Milacron refinanced. Its work force had by then been reduced
to 1,000 in Cincinnati. Many other machine tool firms went out of business, sold out, or moved.
(Cincinnati Museum Center, at: http://www.cincymuseum.org/pdf/educators_researchers/
educators/teacher_resources/MachineToolgalleryguide.pdf )
Auto Industry
The American auto industry was for many decades centered in Michigan, northern Indiana and
northern Ohio. Cincinnati was never part of that core geographic region, but it did at various
times have auto plants and auto parts plants that provided significant employment. Powell
Crosley’s independent Crosley auto company produced cars in the Cincinnati area (Richmond
- 58 -
and Marion, Indiana) between 1939 and 1952 and employed an estimated 2,000 workers.
General Motors Norwood Assembly Plant employed 4,000 workers in the 1970s and the Ford
Batavia Transmission Plant employed 2,000 up to December, 2007.
Auto Plant Closings
1952
Crosley, Richmond and Marion, Indiana
Aug., 1987
General Motors, Norwood, Assembly
Dec., 2007
Ford, Batavia, Transmission
Various sources.
Est. 2,000
4,000
2,000
Toyota is currently the only auto manufacturer in the region. Toyota opened its Georgetown,
Kentucky plant in the late 1980s and the plant currently employs about 7,000 workers. After two
decades, the United Auto Workers (UAW) has failed to organize those workers who do not have
a union contract. The Georgetown plant is 60 miles from Cincinnati, putting it beyond the city’s
economic periphery but within the broader regional economy.
GE Aircraft Engines
Wright Aeronautical in Evendale (taken over by General Electric in 1949) employed 30,000
workers in 1942. However, it employed only about 20,000 workers in 1990 and less than 10,000
by 2000.
GE Aircraft Engines Greater Cincinnati employment 1990-2000
1990
18,900
1991
17,300
1993
13,000
1994
8,500
1995-2001 8,000 to 8,500
Mike Boyer, “GEAE to Slash 4,000 Jobs,” Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 4, 2001.
http://www.enqquirer.com/editions/2001/10/04/fin_geae_to_slash_4_000.html
Labor Union Organization
Cincinnati’s workers’ incomes reflect the national trend toward stagnation and even a decline in
workers’ real wages largely as a result of the decline of industry and manufacturing and in part
because of the reduced power of labor unions. In the United States only 12 percent of all workers
belong to labor unions, with 36.2 percent of government workers being unionized and only 7.4
percent of private sector workers belonging to unions. Ohio’s rate of unionization is somewhat
higher than the national average with 15.5 percent of workers belonging to labor unions. (US
Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics)
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Few workers have any experience in union struggles. Strikes in the United States have declined
dramatically in the past 35 years. In the 1970s there were 1,000 major work stoppages involving
more than one million workers each year throughout the country. By 2006 there were only 20
major work stoppages involving only 70,000 workers. Most Cincinnati workers have never
participated in a union meeting much less a strike.
Cincinnati’s union membership roughly corresponds to national union membership levels,
though perhaps generally lower than other Midwestern areas and somewhat higher than the
national average.
Union Membership - Cincinati-Middletown OH-IN-KY
Sector
Sample
Member
Covered
Total
1,033
976,002
118,342
130,007
Private
925
872,349
70,625
73,293
Public
108
103,654
47,717
56,714
12.1
8.1
46.0
%Covered
13.3
8.4
54.7
Union Membership, Coverage, Density and Employment by Combined Statistical Area (CSA) and MSA,
2006 (details in table note) Note: Sample size (Obs) for many cells are small and should be used with
care. http://www.unionstats.com/
Cincinnati’s AFL-CIO Labor Council is made up of 130 unions. As in other parts of the
country, the labor movement is now divided between the AFL-CIO unions and the new Change
to Win Federation. Such large and important unions as the Carpenters, the Teamsters and SEIU
have left the AFL-CIO for Change to Win.
Some of Cincinnati’s Largest Labor Unions
Union
Members
United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1099, Kroger
11,000
Teamster Local 100 (Freight)
6,000
Cincinnati Federation of Teachers (CFT), Cincinnati Public Schools
3,200
United Steel Workers (USW), AK Steel, Middletown, Ohio
2,700
American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Univ. of Cincinnati
2,300
United Auto Workers Local 647 at GEAE
1,300
International Association of Machinists Local 912 at GEAE
600
Estimated membership from various news reports.
For more than twenty years the Cincinnati Labor Council had the country’s largest Labor Day
picnic, but Cincinnati’s unions declined in members and saw few gains in collective bargaining.
Unlike developments in other areas, during those years the AFL-CIO leadership did not create
activist groups such as Jobs with Justice, Street Heat, or a local Committee for Occupational
Safety and Health. The AFL-CIO generally preferred to rely on contacts with the Democratic
- 60 -
Party to improve the labor situation, rather than mobilizing union members to fight their
employers.
Cincinnati’s first major organizing effort in many years was led by the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU). Janitors won an important victory in July 2007 when SEIU won
a contract from cleaning companies that clean about two-thirds of the buildings in Cincinnati.
The agreement called for wages to rise to a minimum of $7.05 an hour by Oct. 1, 2007 and to
$9.80 an hour by Jan. 1, 2012. Before that, janitors earned between $5.85 and $6.85 an hour. The
agreement provides janitors access to employer-subsidized group health insurance starting Jan.
1, 2010 at a cost of $20 a month for those in a single plan and up to $198 a month for the most
expensive family plan. (“Justice for Janitors,” Editorial, Cincinnati Post, July 31, 2007 at: http://news.cincypost.
com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070731/EDIT/707310304/1003)
UNITE-HERE and the Teamsters have had an organizing campaign at CINTAS, and though
the corporation is headquartered in Cincinnati, the campaign does not focus on CINTAS
workers in the Cincinnati area. UNITE-HERE has also been organizing workers at some
national hotel chains some of which have hotels in Northern Kentucky.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) has been engaged in some new
organizing in meat packing and processing plants in the region.
Cincinnati labor unions and churches helped to establish the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers
Center located in downtown Cincinnati. The Workers Center has been engaged in a campaign to
organize day laborers and other unorganized groups in Cincinnati.
Still, despite these recent organizing efforts, the Cincinnati labor unions remain a small minority
among all workers, have taken few efforts to expand their influence, and have seldom used their
economic power in the form of strikes, boycotts, and protest demonstrations. The weakness of
the labor unions and other social movements has left Cincinnati’s corporate elite free to wield its
power.
The Geography of Corporate Power and Social Space
Corporate power has structured social space in Cincinnati in such a way as to create patterns of
class and racial segregation. While some people live in security and luxury in exclusive suburbs
in multimillion dollar mansions, others live in inner city neighborhoods in dilapidated housing
and surrounded by social problems. But even within the city of Cincinnati some live in relatively
comfortable and secure neighborhoods while others live in disintegrating slums. Social class
and economic power largely determine who lives where and under what conditions, and class is
determined by the power of the corporations we have discussed here.
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The Social Space of the Elite
Just as the corporate elite has structured the city of Cincinnati, so it has also structured its own
space in the exclusive suburbs of the region. A comparison between the average incomes and
home values of Cincinnati and those of the suburb of Indian Hill where many of the corporate
elite live shows how social class, based on property, wealth and power, are reflected in the social
geography.
Comparison of Wealth and Property
Cincinnati and Indian Hill
Cincinnati
Indian Hill
Median Income 2007
$ 40,956
$363,000
Value of Homes 2007
$ 93,000
$1,200,000
“Rating the Burbs,” www.cincybusinessmag.com, Dec. 2007, based on 2006 figures; and, http://www.city-data.com/
us-cities/The-Midwest/Cincinnati-Economy.html
Indian Hill has only 5,907 inhabitants living in 2,066 households and is 94% white with less
than one percent each of African Americans, Native Americans, Asians or Hispanics. Indian Hill
is one of the safest cities in the region with 0.35 violent crimes per 1,000 population, compared
to 10.65 per 1,000 in the middle class neighborhood of Clifton in Cincinnati. Indian Hill also
has the second best public school system in the region though many send their children to the
Cincinnati Country Day School. Indian Hill, home of corporate board members, CEOs, and
other top executives has none of the problems of poverty that working people in Cincinnati live
with. It is an island of wealth and security in a sea of economic insecurity, poverty and social
distress.
While only the wealthiest can afford to live in Indian Hill, other members of the elite live in
other expensive suburban neighborhoods, as do members of the upper middle class. The simplest
way to rank these suburbs is by property values, though other factors such as school systems and
public safety will also be important in how people decided where to live. The following chart
shows those thirteen suburbs where median home sale prices in 2006 were over $200,000. By
and large these are the suburbs where Cincinnati’s more comfortable upper and middle classes
reside, many of them independent business owners, corporate executives, middle managers, and
professionals.
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Cincinnati’s Upper and Middle Class Suburbs
(Ranked by Property Values Only)
Suburb
Indian Hill
Terrace Park
Montgomery
Symmes Township
Amberley Village
Mason
Wyoming
Mariemont
Clear Creek Township (Warren County)
Turtle Creek Township (Warren County)
Glendale
West Chester (Butler County)
Madeira
Median Home Sale Price 2006
$1,200,000
$ 480,000
$ 370,950
$ 304,500
$ 292,000
$ 290,000
$ 285,000
$ 282,000
$ 268,000
$ 257,000
$ 255,000
$ 225,000
$ 201,000
Chart adapted from: Rating the Burbs,” www.cincybusinessmag.com, Dec. 2007, based on 2006 figures
The corporate elite of Cincinnati has created a regional social geography that protects itself
and its interests, supports a secure upper middle class, and maintains a dependent middle and
working class, but allows thousands of poor people, particularly women and children, to fall into
poverty in many inner-city neighborhoods.
Cincinnati’s Middle Class, Working Class and Poor
Corporate control has made Cincinnati the third poorest medium-sized city in the United
States according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. While Ohio is 21
in the nation in terms of poverty with 13.3 percent of the people living below the poverty line,
Cincinnati is a truly poor city. According to the survey published in August 2007, 27.8 percent of
Cincinnati’s residents lived in poverty in 2006. The city had been number 22 in 2004 with 19.6
percent of its people in poverty, but in 2006 the survey showed Cincinnati in the top ten poorest
cities with 25 percent of its population living in poverty in 2005.
Social class acts to structure poverty within the city of Cincinnati. Social scientists who study
urban issues have divided Cincinnati into four zones based on an index of socio-economic status.
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Cincinnati Residential Zones Based on SES Indicators
SES Area Communities (or parts thereof )
SES Indicators
SES I
Lower Price Hill, Linwood, North
Fairmount-English Woods, Camp
Washington, South CumminsvilleMillvale, Fay Apts., Winton Hills,
Over-the-Rhine, tracts in East Price
Hill, Westwood, South Fairmount,
Northside, Roselawn, Avondale,
Evanston, parts of Walut Hills, Mt.
Auburn, the West End.
SES II
Mt. Airy-Northside Slopes, Winton
Place, Corryville, Bond Hill, Linwood,
Carthage, Evanston-East Walnut Hills,
parts of West End and Mt. Auburn,
clusters in Avondale, Fairview-Clifton
Heights, and Madsonville.
Total pop.: 81,339
80% African American
Unemployment rate: 8%
Households below poverty: 24%
Receiving public assistance: 23%
Median family income: $30,190
SES III
Riverside-Sayler Park, Kennedy
Heights, Sayler Park, University
Heights, parts of Mt. Auburn,
Westwood, West Price Hill, Oakley,
Madisonville, Evanston, Walnut Hills,
Central Business District, 3 sections on
north fringe.
Total pop.: 96,066
38% African American
Unemployment rate: 6%
Households below poverty: 14%
Receiving public assistance 20%
Median family income: $41,848
SES IV
Mt. Lookout, Oakley, Mt. Adams,
California, Mt. Washington, Mount
Lookout-Columbia Tusculum, Clifton,
East Walnut Hills, North AvondalePaddock Hills, and tracts in Central
Business District, Pleasant Ridge, Mt.
Airy, Westwood, West Price Hill, and
Fairview-Clifton Heights.
Total Pop: 96,059
13% African American
Unemployment rate: 3%
Households below poverty: 9%
Receiving public assistance: 18%
Median family income: $73,723
Total pop.: 64,284
81% African American
High school ed.: 53%;
Households below poverty: 45%
Unemployment rate: 18%;
Receiving public assistance: 32%
Median family income: $17,487;
1 child in 4 in two-parent home.
Michael Maloney and Christopher Auffrey, The Social Areas of Cincinnati: An Analysis of Social Needs, Fourth
Edition. (Cincinnati: School of Planning University of Cincinnati, 2004). Based on figures from 2000 U.S. Census,
at: http://www.socialareasofcincinnati.org/
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Racial Segregation in Cincinnati
Closely related to the patters of economic stratification in Cincinnati and its surrounding suburban area are patterns of racial segregation. Cincinnati has by 2002 become the country’s sixth
most segregated city:
According to the census data, among major metropolitan areas with at least 1 million
residents and at least 20,000 blacks, Cincinnati ranks behind only Greater Milwaukee,
Detroit, Greater Cleveland, St. Louis and Newark, N.J., in residential segregation. Indianapolis ranked 13th and Columbus was 22nd in the Census Bureau’s segregation index.
After more than three decades of steady white population flight -- and, to a lesser extent,
black middle- and upper-class flight -- to the suburbs, Cincinnati’s racial inequities extend far beyond the glaring contrast between tony neighborhoods such as Hyde Park and
communities on the lower end of the economic spectrum such as the West End.
Despite having a relatively balanced overall population of 331,000 that is 53 percent
white and 43 percent black, Cincinnati, across all income levels and demographic categories, is largely a city of white neighborhoods and black neighborhoods, but very few
black-and-white neighborhoods.
…..
[Some] 29 of Cincinnati’s 48 neighborhoods have white or black majorities of even more
than 3-to-1, in some cases, substantially more. The population gap is even wider throughout Greater Cincinnati, where blacks comprise only 13 percent of the tri-state’s 1.6 million residents.
Barry M. Horstman, “Cincinnati Now 6th Most Segregated City,” Cincinnati Post, Nov. 30, 2002.
at: http://www.cincypost.com/2002/11/30/census113002.html
Poverty Among Women and Children
Cincinnati then, while it has some affluent areas, is a poor city. Poverty particularly affects
women and children. In Cincinnati, 70 percent of poor families have female heads of household.
In Hamilton County, which includes many more prosperous suburbs, 16 percent of children
life in poverty which affects not only their material well being, but also their social life, their
psychological development and their future chances in life.
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Child Poverty in Hamilton County
County Population
Child Population
Over all Poverty Rate
Child Poverty Rate
808,652
24.9%
11.6%
16.1%
Children’s Defense Fund, 2006 fact sheet for Hamilton County, Ohio
http://www.cdfohio.org/publications_research/state_local_data/factsheets/2006_FactSheets/fs06_Hamilton.pdf
Among 50 cities studied, Cincinnati fell in the bottom one-third based on 8 of 10 indicators of
child well being in a study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation using 1990 statistics. Cincinnati
scored particularly poorly in terms of low birth weight babies, birth to teenagers, percentage of
children in single parent families and number of children living in distressed neighborhoods.
That study found that one third of the city’s 91,352 children under 18 lived in neighborhoods
characterized by poverty, in female-headed families which suffered from unemployment and
welfare dependency. (Cited in Social Areas of Cincinnati, Chp. 7, p. 8.)
Cincinnati is notorious for its infant mortality rate which is comparable to that of many Third
World nations. In Hamilton County in 2005, there were 11,445 births and 159 infant deaths or
about twice the national average.
Infant Mortality Comparison, 2005
Geographical RegionDeaths per 1,000 live births
Hamilton County
13.9 (159 deaths ÷ 11,445 births)
Ohio
8.3
U.S.
6.8
Japan
3.28
The infant mortality rate is calculated as the number of live- born infants who die before their first birthday, divided
by the number of live-born infants. This result is multiplied by 1,000 in order to convert it to a rate per thousand.
Statistics from Hamilton County, Ohio Department of Health, National Center for Health Statistics.
At: http://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/NR/rdonlyres/7F643A93-60FA-4A42-BD7C-F829E0645715/0/
infantmortalityreportfinal.pdf
Childhood Asthma
Childhood asthma is also a growing issue in Cincinnati and the region. The growth in asthma
may be linked to Cincinnati’s poor air quality and to other environmental exposures.
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Percent of Children withDoctor-Diagnosed Asthma in 2000
Hamilton, Butler, Warren, Clermont
12%
(Ohio)
Kenton, Boone, Campbell (Kentucky)
13%
Dearborn and 5 other counties (Indiana)
16%
Source: Child Policy Research Center of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
(Sustainable Cincinnati 2005, at: http://www.sustainablecincinnati.org/sc_2005.pdf )
Childhood Lead Poisoning
Cincinnati has thousands of children who have been exposed to lead poisoning, especially in
the inner city. City and county government have carried out lead abatement programs and
screenings of children, but the exposure levels remain high.
Hamilton County
Childhood Lead Exposure
2003
2004
Total Screened for Lead Poisoning
9,416
8,089
Elevated Blood Levels
383
410
Percentage Elevated Blood Levels
4%
5%
Cincinnati
2003
2004
8,890
7,673
351
383
4%
5%
Education
Cincinnati Public Schools claims a graduation rate of 76.6 percent. However, a recent Johns
Hopkins University study of “drop out factories,” schools that produce extremely high rates
of high school drop outs, found that nearly 10 percent of Ohio’s high schools, or just under
70 schools statewide, qualified as dropout factories, including seven of 17 high schools in the
Cincinnati Public Schools district. (Nancy Zuckerbrod, “Drop Out Factories,” Cincinnati Post,
Oct. 30, 207) The exception is Walnut Hills High School, one of the best in the state and the
nation, which largely serves as a college prep high school for many of Cincinnati’s upper middle
class and middle class children.
The Sustainable Cincinnati 2005 report found that education here was not adequate for students
to find jobs in the new high tech economy. “AngelouEconomics used a composite score of SAT/
ACT, graduation rates, dropout rates and student/teacher rations as a benchmark of educational
performance in ‘tech metros.’ The highest score was achieved by Boston (99.8). The Cincinnati
Standard Metropolitan Area scored 77.8, lowest of any tech metro except Colorado Springs.
These data suggest that our students are not ‘work ready’ for the high technology jobs desired in
the region.” (Sustainable Cincinnati 2005, at: http://www.sustainablecincinnati.org/sc_2005.pdf )
The problem is not the teachers. Cincinnati’s unionized teachers are the best educated and trained
in the state, with more nationally certified teachers than any district in Ohio. (Enquirer at:
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071221/NEWS0102/712210411/1058/
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NEWS01) Conservative political activists on previous school boards caused deep divisions and
paralyzed the board. Teachers and parents hope that a new school board and successful school
levies will make it possible to improve the system.
Environment
Cincinnati’s distorted economic development has also affected our environment. Cincinnati
ranked 11th in the nation for unhealthy smog days in 2003, compared with Columbus
and Cleveland which tied for 25th. In the Cincinnati region some 59% of our the streams
which are tributaries of the Ohio River and its Ohio and Kentucky tributaries fall short of
State and Federal water quality standards. (Sustainable Cincinnati 2005 at: http://www.
sustainablecincinnati.org/sc_2005.pdf )
General Health
Cincinnati’s citizens, pushed by corporate advertising, have come to live an unhealthy lifestyle.
In the Greater Cincinnati area (encompassing 22 counties) almost 61% of the population is
overweight and 22% is obese, according to Body Mass Index measurements. Those who are
overweight and obese are at a greater risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and
other health problems. (Sustianable Cincinnati 2005 at: http://www.sustainablecincinnati.org/
sc_2005.pdf )
Smoking is also a serious health problem. The Great Cincinnati Health Status Surveys for 1999
and 2000s found that 33.3 of those living in the 14-county area smoke. This is 50% higher than
the national average of 1 in 4. The recent smoking ban in Cincinnati could have resulted in
improvements in these areas. Tobacco use contributed to many illnesses including lung cancer
and heart disease. (Sustainable Cincinnati 2005 at: http://www.sustainablecincinnati.org/sc_
2005.pdf )
Suicide levels in Cincinnati are higher than they should be. In this area (14 counties) the annual
average age-adjusted suicide rate for 1994-1998 was between 6.0 and 16.8 per 100,000. The
Healthy People 1010 goal is to reduce suicide to 5.0 per 100,000. (Sustainable Cincinnati 2005
at: http://www.sustainablecincinnati.org/sc_2005.pdf )
(See the Indicators of Health Communities 2006 report of the Health Collaborative for Greater
Cincinnati for current figures for current health statistics at: http://www.the-collaborative.org/
Portals/4/docs/Indicators%20Reports/indicatorsall2006.pdf )
Clearly corporate rule has structured social geography in such a way that the elite live safe and
secure lives, while working people live on the edge and poor people suffer social distress of all
sorts.
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Part IV
Cincinnati: One Hundred Years
of Corporate Power
Corporations in Cincinnati wield their power in a variety of ways in order to control the
investment, development, and politics in the city. The corporations act on their own, for
example, when they make investment decisions, open or close new plants and offices, hire or
lay off workers. They also act through their mobilization of the many civic organizations that
they influence or control and through their policy organizations such the Cincinnati Business
Committee (CBC), Downtown Cincinnati, Incorporated (DCI) and the Cincinnati Center City
Development Corporation (3CDC). Then, too, they act through their influence over political
parties and candidates whose organizations they finance and whose campaigns they have paid for.
While they do not always win everything they want, their economic and organizational resources
are formidable and their political power is significant.
Corporations, the City and the Region
Cincinnati is important for these corporations because they were founded here, because
their headquarters are here, and because they have some of their operations here. Cincinnati
corporations usually have a significant investment in the city in land, office buildings, and
sometimes in plants and facilities. A corporation that has a long history in this city or region will
often have significant real estate investments as well as collateral holdings in the area. They have a
vested interest in the form of capital sunk into region.
In addition, corporations are concerned that their corporate headquarters and its staff be able to
go about their business—that is the corporate business—without being distracted or distressed by
what happens in Cincinnati. They must be concerned about the city because corporate directors,
officers and other top executives of the company, as well as other high and middle level managers,
live in the Cincinnati area. Moreover, in order to recruit and hold personnel, they have to be able
to offer life in an attractive and comfortable metropolitan region if not necessarily in the city
itself.
Corporate Self-Concept: We Know Best
Since they have become successful, wealthy, and powerful, corporate leaders often sincerely
believe that they know what’s best not only for their own business, but also for the community,
the state and the nation. This is the corporate conceit. Corporate leaders have often first
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convinced themselves and then convinced the public that what is good for business will be good
for everyone. They will argue that, even when they act in their own interest, they are acting in the
public interest. In many cases it does not even occur to most of them that the wealth and power
that they have accumulated, control, and wield might harm the community.
Ideas and Values
What are the corporate elite’s fundamental ideas and values? In Cincinnati, as throughout the
nation over the last thirty years, conservative notions of the natural benevolence of free markets,
competition, and individualism have been dominant. Television, schools, and even churches have
promoted the idea that capitalism—often a ruthless and heartless version of capitalism—is the
only possible form of social organization. The Republican Party in particular, but the Democrats
as well, have worked to end government intervention in the economy, to reduce or eliminate
programs aimed as social well being, and to break the power of labor organizations. The idea
of social solidarity, that we as a people and a government should take care of each other and
especially of those least able to take care of themselves, has been attacked, ridiculed and scorned.
Cincinnati corporate owners and executives typically have a notion of noblesse oblige, that is, that
they believe that they are the society’s aristocrats who have the responsibility to take care of the
benighted and the unwashed. They often have the paternalistic notion that they must condescend
to tell others how to live and to “help” others. From this attitude comes corporate philanthropy
and charity, using gifts as a form of control.
While corporations have over the last twenty years or so engaged in discourse of diversity and
multiculturalism and have talked about gender equity and respect for sexual preference, at least
in Cincinnati, white men still make most of the economic and political decisions. While the
power elite of Cincinnati now incorporates into its upper echelons a few African Americans,
Asians, Latinos and women, white men retain most of the powerful positions in the corporations.
Whether or not they are consciously racist, the collective consciousness of this white elite is
imbued with a profound sense of white racial superiority. The white elite often see African
Americans as identified with urban decay, poverty, and crime. Latino immigrants too have
become stigmatized as “illegals” and criminals.
Cincinnati’s corporate world view, then, consists of a conservative ideology, an attitude of
noblesse oblige, and a sense of white superiority. All of this of course is subordinate to the
corporation’s primary function which is to make profits for its stockholders. Corporations with
huge investments in land and significant investments in plants and machinery seek to enhance
those developments through a strategy of development and growth in the metropolitan area. The
corporate vision of development does not necessarily, however, mean improvements that benefit
local people either as residents or as workers. Rather, development means what enhances the
corporate investments and leads to greater profits and assets.
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How is Policy Made?
Corporate domination of Cincinnati has meant the hollowing out of democratic institutions
and the neutralization of democratic processes. Over many decades, Cincinnati corporations
have worked to eliminate or weaken democratic institutions and to replace them with other
institutions over which the corporations have more direct control. Policy often comes to be
made by elected officials in public meetings, but by small groups of corporate leaders in private
meetings. Later their decisions are put into action by the corporations, by corporate coalitions
such as CBC, DCI, and 3CDC, as well as by the boards of the various civic organizations
involved in education, culture and society, and, finally, by the city council, county board, and other
public institutions.
This system of business-political organization is not limited to Cincinnati, rather it reflects
the way that corporate power generally works both locally and nationally. Nor is it anything
new. Corporations began in the 1910s to develop the methods by which they have, for decades,
controlled Cincinnati. Procter and Gamble was from the 1910s forward at the center of these
developments. To see how its role developed we have to understand the long history of corporate
power in the city’s history.
Cincinnati City Government: Boss Cox
During the 1880s Cincinnati was an industrial city faced with chaotic growth, unregulated
development, a growing crime wave and labor union strikes. The city’s wealthy citizens wanted to
get a grip on the city, and found their man in George B. Cox, a local tavern owner and politician.
Beginning in the 1880s, with the backing of brewer George Moerlein and other brewers—
brewing was then one of the most important industries in Cincinnati—Cox became the leader of
the Hamilton County Republican Party. Later, Cox shrewdly broadened his alliance to include
the Hilltop reformers and even established partnership with the defeated Democratic Party. Cox’s
success in creating such a broad coalition eventually led more conservative Republicans such as
Charles P. Taft to come around to support him as well. (Miller, 1968)
During the period from the 1890s until about 1910 Cox ran the city of Cincinnati, as head of
its Republican Party, through the same sorts of collusion with business and corrupt practices
characteristic of Democratic Party machines in other cities. At the same time, urban political
machines such as Cox’s also had to be responsive to the largely immigrant working class which
made up a significant portion of city’s residents and to the African Americans who made up
about 15 percent of the population. Like the Republican Party everywhere in that period, Cox’s
party could count on the loyalty of African American voters, about 8,000 then in Cincinnati.
Progressive Reform: The Charter Committee
By 1910 the new power in America was the corporation and corporate executives found bossstyle government an obstacle to their control over politics. Corporation owners and executives
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loathed the political power of big city machines usually run by the Democratic Party or
sometimes by the growing Socialist Party which then controlled government in several Ohio
cities and towns. Under pressure from immigrants, workers and labor unions, those political
parties sometimes checked the power of the corporations. The corporate elite organized to break
the power of the machines under the banner of a movement called “Progressivism” or as it as
sometimes called the Goo-Goo or good government movement.
In most of the country the Progressives fought against machines controlled by Democrats
and Socialists; but in Cincinnati they confronted Cox’s Republican Party machine. Cincinnati
corporate leaders and professionals in the so-called Progressive movement began to push for
reforms that would increase the power of corporations, executives and professionals and decrease
the power of the city’s working people, immigrants and African Americans. The Progressives
called for taking the politics out of city government, for running the city like a business and
putting it in the hands of experts. They, of course, were the experts.
The collapse of the brewing industry made change possible. Cox’s old Republican machine had
always been backed by the brewers, but they had been virtually wrecked by Ohio’s adoption
of prohibition in 1917 and the U.S. Congress’s passage of national prohibition in 1920. With
Moerlein and the other brewers crippled and in many cases utterly ruined, space opened up for
other economic and political interests, above all for the powerful Procter & Gamble Corporation.
To take political power from the Cox machine (Cox himself had died), a group of about 75
businessmen and professionals created the Cincinnatus Association, whose principal spokesman
was Murray Seasongood, a local attorney. The Cincinnatus Association then created the Charter
Committee to push for reform in local government. Most of the members of the Charter
Committee were independent Republicans, that is, men who had broken with Cox’s regular
Republican organization but remained in the party of big business. To them reform meant
putting political power in the hands of businessmen and professionals. Seasongood took the lead
role in attacking the machine and defeating its tax levies.
Seasongood worked closely with Cecil Gamble (one of the Gambles of Procter & Gamble) and
other businessmen to create a non-partisan group called the Charter Committee whose goal was
to change the city charter. City councils in that era were democratic parliaments with members
from every neighborhood that thrashed out city policies in public debates. The proposed charter
would do away with the 32-member city council based on districts and create a small council of
seven members elected at-large on a non-partisan basis and by proportional representation. The
charter also reduced the mayor to a figurehead and created the position of city manager. In 1924
the new charter passed by a vote of 92,510 to 41,105.
The 1924 charter, by abolishing the 32-member council elected form local districts, made it
more difficult and expensive to campaign city-wide. City council candidates would now require
financial backing to run for office, and big business and the corporations would be happy to
provide it in return for a loyal political agent on the council. The small seven-member council
reduced the democratic give-and-take between council members and their constituents. Local
people had less information about what was going on in city government. At the same time,
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the seven-member council dependent on financial backing to run for office, made it easier for
business to influence city hall.
With the new city charter adopted, the Charter Committee now dedicated itself to fielding
candidates for office in the first election under the new system, endorsing mostly independent
Republicans but also some Democrats. Seasongood headed the first slate which also included
Cecil Gamble. The initial Charter Committee slate listed other businessmen, a woman health
worker, and a labor union leader who was a Republican. The slate was pluralist to a point,
including Protestants and Catholics and a Jew, but no African Americans. In the November 1925
election, the Charter Committee’s candidate won 76,305 votes, to 33,304 for regular Republicans,
and 10,021 for independents. Charter candidates won six of nine seats on the council. (Lowrie,
1927) In subsequent elections the Charter Committee dropped the labor representative from the
slate and no blacks were nominated. (Goldman, 1930)
Murray Seasongood then undertook the next task, which was to find a suitable candidate for city
manager, the man who under the new system would actually run the city. While in Washington,
D.C. to present a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Seasongood conferred with Newton
D. Baker, former Mayor of Cleveland and Secretary of War. Baker recommended Col. C. O.
Sherrill, then a presidential aide and director of Building and Grounds in D.C. Seasongood also
talked with his Harvard classmate Dwight F. Davis, then Secretary of War, and with oil magnate
and Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon as well as with Herbert Hoover, Secretary of
Commerce. They all agreed on the choice of Sherrill as Cincinnati City Manager. Sherrill was
appointed to the post and held the position into the 1930s. (Seasongood, 1938) As Seasongoods’
interviews with national cabinet members indicate, Cincinnati’s future was now clearly linked
both to national corporations such as P&G and to the corporate and Republican dominated
federal government.
As we can see, between the period of 1910 to 1930 the control of government in Cincinnati
had passed from domination by Moerlein and the brewing interests of the old regular
Republican organization to control by Procter and Gamble, the Charter Committee and the
new independent Republicans. The change in city government corresponded to the change in
the American economy from local and regional markets, where local companies like Moerlein
competed, to the creation of national and multinational corporations, such as Procter & Gamble.
The original Charter Committee represented the key political institution in the transition from
control by local companies operating in regional markets control by locally-based companies
operating in national and international markets.
Proportional Representation in a New Context
With the coming of the Great Depression of the 1930s and then World War II in the early
1940s, the charter and particularly the city’s system of proportional representation took on a
new significance. The city’s reformed charter and its proportional representation provision had
originally been conceived as an anti-democratic measure to take power away from an admittedly
corrupt machine and from its working class and African American supporters. During the 1930s
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and 40s, however, proportional representation took on an altogether different political meaning in
a new social and political context.
Unions began once again to wield some weight in local politics. The 1930s saw the rise of the
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) which represented workers in the new unions
in industries such as steel, auto, glass and rubber. The CIO created a national political action
committee, CIO PAC, and determined to play a role in politics at the local, state and national
level. The local CIO saw Cincinnati’s proportional representation system as offering a more
democratic system than that which existed in many cities.
African Americans also became a greater force in city politics. With the U.S. entry into World
War II in December of 1941, Cincinnati like many other cities experienced an influx of African
Americans coming to seek work in the city’s factories. The African American population in the
city grew and blacks began to realize that they could potentially have more weight in city politics.
Like the CIO’s union leaders, African Americans with their expanded population now saw the
proportional representation system as offering them democratic opportunities for greater political
power.
Just as labor and blacks began to see that proportional representation could work to their
advantage, the corporate elite turned against it and began to lobby for its repeal. The Republican
Party began its attempt to repeal proportional representation in the midst of the labor upheaval
in 1936. The attempt failed and another was made in 1939; this time the Republicans attempted
to link proportional representation to Hitler, Mussolini and the Communists. The City Charter
Committee and the independent Democrats resisted the red-baiting and the repeal failed again.
The next Republican attempt to repeal proportional representation came in 1947 at the opening
of the Cold War and once again proportional representation was linked to Communism, but the
measure still lost. A similar attempt was made in 1954 that also failed.
Having failed with its anti-Communist tactics, the Republican Party turned in 1957 to another
ploy: race baiting. The civil rights movement had just been launched in Montgomery, Alabama in
1956, and 1957 was the year of the events at Little Rock, Arkansas. Race issues were foremost in
the American consciousness. Playing upon whites’ fears of black political power, the Republicans
spread rumors that unless proportional representation was repealed the next mayor would be an
African American, namely City Councilman Ted Berry.
The Republicans’ appeal to race worked. Whites voted 2 to 1 against proportional representation
and blacks 4 to 1 for it. Proportional representation finally went down to defeat. The Republican
Party and its corporate backers were victorious. Ted Berry, who had been one of the top votegetter in 1955, lost his bids for the council in 1957 and 1959. (Kolesar, 1996 and “History of the
Charter Committee”)
As one scholar wrote about the 1950s in Cincinnati:
The relationship of the city’s conservative business leadership and its growing minority
population has been one of separation; the two groups co-exist but do not mix. The
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Republicans of the late 1950s were responsible for a charter revision that changed the
pattern of elections for council members from that of proportional representation to at
large elections. This change made it difficult for blacks and neighborhood representatives
to get elected. (Levine et al 1981)
This was exactly what the business interests had intended. They wanted to weaken the political
power of black, working class, and lower middle class voters, and they largely succeeded.
The Citizens School Committee
During this same period, a similar anti-democratic movement “reformed” Cincinnati’s school
system. School boards in Ohio once had 30 to 40 members depending on the size of the city.
Like early city councils, they were real democratic bodies. Candidates for school board at that
time ran as representatives of small districts the size of local neighborhoods, where they could
campaign by walking through the community and talking with their neighbors. Candidates ran
as the representatives of political parties on a political platform. Republican, Democratic, FarmLabor and Socialist candidates in Ohio won election to school board in that period thanks to the
votes of their neighbors.
Professionals and corporations, anxious to take the control of education away from local citizens
raised the slogan “get politics out of education.” They then fought to change the law to reduce the
size of school boards to only seven members and to conduct elections that were non-partisan and
at-large. A Cincinnati doctor, John Withrow, who had married into a wealthy business family,
was the moving force behind changing the state law. Withrow worked closely with James N.
Gamble of Procter & Gamble. The Cincinnati reforms succeeded in 1913 when the old large
board was eliminated and the new seven-member board was created. With “politics” supposedly
out of education and candidates elected at large, it would take corporate backing and money to
get elected.
In Cincinnati in 1921, local professionals and corporations, again led by Withrow and backed
by P&G and other corporations, created the Citizens School Committee (CSC). From 1921
to 1961 the CSC controlled nominations and elections to the local school board. During the
period of the 1950s the CSC was dominated by Procter & Gamble, Cincinnati Gas and Electric
Company, and several other smaller companies.
During the 1950s, Neil McElroy, president of Procter & Gamble, came to be the dominant
voice controlling the Citizens School Committee. In those years, McElroy oversaw the creation
of another institution, the Greater Cincinnati School Foundation, linked to the CSC and
controlling information between the schools and the public. The first president of the Greater
Cincinnati School Foundation, Charles Sawyer, had served as Secretary of Commerce in the
administration of President Harry S. Truman.
Policy for Cincinnati education during that period was made in small private meetings between
business executives. McElroy would call business leaders to meet with him over lunch to decide
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educational and city policy. After a decision had been reached, McElroy would point his finger
at the different businessmen and tell them how much each one was expected to contribute to the
current policy campaign.
Cincinnati’s corporate elite, then as now, was linked to national politics. During this same period
in the 1950s McElroy served as chairman of the White House Conference on Education. Then
in 1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Neil McElroy to the position of Secretary
of Defense, a position he held until 1959. (Spring, 1984)
CCDC and the Master Plan of 1948
While the Republican Party fought the Charter Party over proportional representation
Cincinnati’s power elite moved forward with its plans for the city. Cincinnati corporations
and political leaders, such as Fred Lazarus of Federated Department Stores, Neil McElroy of
Procter and Gamble, and Cincinnati Mayor Albert Cash, created the Cincinnati Community
Development Community (CCDC) in 1948. The CCDC would be the first of a series of
corporate policy and planning organizations created after World War II and continuing into the
twenty-first century. CCDC, working with the City of Cincinnati, came up with the Master Plan
of 1948 which set the post-war direction for the city.
The 1948 city plan called for the development of expressways to link downtown Cincinnati with
suburban communities, advocated for slum clearance, and foresaw the construction of low-cost
housing in the West End as well as new industrial development. Under the plan the city agreed
to pay the cost of infrastructure for new industries, shifting the cost from business to taxpayers.
Working class communities and black Cincinnatians’ neighborhoods fell before the bulldozers
and the construction of a new freeway, later named I-75, that rose where their homes had once
stood.
The Master Plan of 1948, combined with the post-war trend of suburban sub-developments and
shopping centers, and followed by white flight set the pattern for modern Cincinnati. As the
suburbs with their shopping centers and later malls grew, the city shrunk, the downtown became
less attractive, and the inner city declined as slum landlords declined to maintain property. The
inner city was abandoned to older residents, African Americans, and the new Appalachian
immigrants of the 1950s who could no longer make a living in the coal fields from which they
had come.
The Riots of 1967
The growth of the civil rights and black power movements eventually swept over Cincinnati
leading to a black urban rebellion in 1967 comparable to those in many other American cities.
A second riot broke out in 1968. African Americans in Cincinnati, like those in other cities,
rioted to protest years of racism, discrimination, economic exploitation, political oppression, and
government neglect.
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The long term effect of the riots in Cincinnati, as in other cities, was to accelerate both white
flight and the differentiation within the African American community. Some blacks took
advantage of expanding opportunities in employment to improve their situation and move out
of the inner city to better neighborhoods in the city and in some few cases to relocate to homes
in the suburbs. Other African Americans with fewer resources, less education, and without skills
were left behind in Over-the-Rhine and other inner city neighborhoods. The white abandonment
of inner-city Cincinnati combined with the rapid growth of the suburbs led to conflicts over city
planning. The white suburbs did not want to pay for downtown or city development. (Leibovitz
and Salmon, 1999)
As everywhere in the United States, the developments of the 1960s and 1970s—African
American urban rebellions, students protests, the anti-Vietnam War movement, union organizing
drives and strikes by teachers and public employees—sometimes disrupted but did not break
the grip of Cincinnati’s corporate elite on city government. The growth of federal government
programs under Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson and Republican Richard Nixon also had some
impact on the balance of power in the city. However, while the events of that era sometime shook
up the politicians, they hardly disturbed the corporate elite itself.
What caused more problems for the elite was the growing rift between city and county, between
the old urban center and the suburbs, between the racially mixed urban core and the lily white
commuter suburbs. The corporations believed that a plan was needed to create a unified vision,
with corporate power at the center of course. Their huge financial investments in Cincinnati land,
office buildings, and plants were at stake. What was needed they agreed was a new organization.
Business Moves to Take Control Again: the CBC
The Insider’s Guide to Cincinnati, Fourth Edition, writes, “No discussion of government in
Cincinnati, of course, would be complete without mentioning the Cincinnati Business
Committee. This is a group of top executives from the major public and private companies in the
city that takes an active advocacy—and in many cases advisory—role in government affairs. It
is the unofficial fourth branch of Cincinnati government, and some might say more than that.”
(http://www.insiders.com/cincinnati/main-overviews3.htm)
In 1977, 25 chief executive officers of Cincinnati’s major corporations created the Cincinnati
Business Committee (CBC) to provide corporate leadership for a regional development plan
at the center of which would be the revitalization of downtown. CBC was made up entirely
of white men, not admitting its first African American until 1994 and its first woman until
1998. The CBC began what would become a long term process of corporate collaboration
with and influence over city government. In 1983, Mayor Arn Bortz invited the CBC to
create a commission to evaluate city government and then adopted and implemented 66 of the
commission’s recommendations. CBC also worked on the infrastructure commission and on the
development of a convention center. CBC actually worked to find the private funding for the
center in 1987. (Leibovitz and Salmon, 1999)
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The Cincinnati Business Committee has been able to play a central role in Cincinnati politics
and policy for the past three decades. During the 1980s Cincinnati’s Public Schools had a deficit
of nearly one hundred million dollars. In the early-1990s, led by Clement Buenger, chairman
of the board of Fifth Third Bank, the Cincinnati Business Committee (CBC) stepped in and
virtually took over the Cincinnati Public School system.
The Buenger Commission produced a report in 1991 blaming tensions between the teachers
union, the CPS administration and the school board for the schools problems. “To rectify these
problems, the report called for consolidation of power in a strong, CEO-type superintendent,
whose authority is no longer undermined by a labor contract that limits ‘operating flexibility.’”
While the CBC advocated a much more authoritarian school system, it did not in fact succeed
in imposing its will, though business oversight of the system became institutionalized. (Dennis
Carlton, Leaving Children Behind: Urban Education, Class Politics, and the Machines of
Transnational Capitalism,” at: http://louisville.edu/journal/workplace/issue6p1/carlson.html )
CBC was also the driving force behind the successful 1996 Sports Stadium Referendum. CBC
operated behind the scenes raising corporate funding for a “grassroots” organization known as
Citizens for a Major League Future (CMFL). With CBC’s support CMLF raised and spent
more than $1.1 million to fight for a sales tax increase.
Major Contributors to the Stadium Tax Campaign
Corporation
Bengals
P&G
Contribution
$300,000
$ 77,000
Northern Kentucky Chamber of
Commerce
$ 35,000
Cincinnati Area Board of Realtors
Kroger
Cincinnati Bell
Cincinnati Gas & Electric
$
$
$
$
30,000
23,000
16,000
13,000
Clyde Brown and David M. Paul, “The Campaign by Cincinnati Business Interests for Strong Mayors and Sports
Stadia,” The Social Science Journal, Vol. 37, No. 2, 161-177.
The Cincinnati Business Committee’s other major campaign was to create a strong mayor system
of city government. CBC wanted a strong mayor who would lead the city council to back its
vision of Cincinnati’s future, one dominated by corporations. The CBC initially lost the August
1995 referendum on the strong mayor, but came back in 1999 and won. Elected in 1999, Charlie
Luken became the first strong mayor in Cincinnati in 75 years.
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CBC Creates DCI
CBC moved in 1993 to create Downtown Cincinnati Incorporated (DCI) with a board involving
the largest corporations, lawyers, newspaper, and government officials. Like the CBC, DCI was
built upon the idea of a private-public partnership between the corporations and the city. Like
other such private-public partnerships, though it took on tasks such as city planning which were
previously thought of as public matters, it was not democratically accountable. (Leibovitz and
Salmon, 1999)
CBC and DCI created a new vision, a new conception of the geographical character of the city,
now conceived of as encompassing the entire region, city and suburbs together. Such a vision was
important if business leaders were to overcome the city-suburban divide. DCI’s stance was prodevelopment and pro-growth and aimed at making Cincinnati a Midwestern competitor for new
investment, offices, and plants. At the center of its conception was the development of downtown.
DCI established the Vision 2020 Task Force which came up with a vision of the future based
on “upscale consumption, entertainment, and cultural spectacle.” (Leibovitz and Salmon, 1999,
250.) The goal would be to attract affluent white suburbanites to a downtown consumption and
entertainment center. Clearly, this was a vision that ignored the working class and low incomeresidents of inner city Cincinnati, most of whom are African American.
DCI promoted a sense of crisis as a way of motivating its constituencies. Cincinnati had to rush
to transform itself in order to compete with its rivals. The City of Cincinnati would have to be
willing to contribute financially to keep and to attract business in the downtown. (Leibovitz
and Salmon, 1999) In line with this crisis driven sense of competition, in the mid-1990s City
Manager John Shirey asked and got the city council’s permission to offer $27 million to Lazarus
Department Store (of the Federated Department Stores now Macy’s). The city would buy the old
store for $12 million, build a new store for $10 million, and spend $6 million on infrastructure.
The idea was that taxpayers would cover the expenses of Lazarus in order to keep the store
downtown.
The Stadium
CBC also worked to transform the city’s center, backing the construction of two new stadiums
to replace the Riverfront Stadium built in 1970. Mike Brown, owner of the Bengals, and Marge
Schott, owner of the Reds, each hinted that they would move their teams out of town if they did
not get the new facilities. A poll of Cincinnati residents conducted at that time found that 60%
opposed the construction of the stadiums and the taxes it would take to build them.
The CBC preferred to stay in the shadows rather than to directly organize the pro-stadium
tax campaign. HMS Partners of Columbus, Ohio was hired to strategize a campaign with Jeff
Berding, a Democrat, to manage it. HMS Partners and Berding created a phony “grassroots
group” called Citizens for a Major League Future (CMLF). The CMLF set up meetings with
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teachers, labor unions, and African Americans to try to win their support or at least neutralize
them. In the end, the Cincinnati City Council backed the plan with the deciding vote in favor of
the regressive sales tax cast by Mayor Roxanne Qualls. The final tax increase of one-half cent on
the sales tax raised $35 million a year for the staidium and $15 million to reduce property taxes.
(Brown and Paul, 2000)
The corporations hit on city government and tax payers again and again in their attempt to
strengthen the downtown. In the 1980s and 1990s the city spent $36 million to shore up the
Nordstrom Department Store. In 2000, Cincinnati gave Delta Air Lines $3.7 million to keep its
reservations center and 1,000 jobs downtown. In 2002, the city council approved $6.6 million to
keep Saks Fifth Avenue downtown. Then in 2003, Kroger threatened to move its headquarters
out of downtown Cincinnati unless it was given $15 million to build a new downtown garage in
Over-the-Rhine. (Kevin Osborne, “City May Build a Garage for Kroger,” Post, June 19, 2003 and
Randy Tucker and Kevin Aldridge, “Kroger: New Garage or We Go,” Cincinnati Enquirer, Aug.
30, 2003.)
Altogether the city spent $500 million between 1982 and 2002, much of it simply given away to
major corporations, in order to attempt to save downtown. (Dan Monk and Lucy May, “Road
to Nowhere,” Business Courier, May 31, 2002, at: http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/
stories/2002/06/03/story1.html )
The Over-the-Rhine Peoples Movement
From 1973 to today, the Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement has organized residents to fight
against the gentrification of land and for affordable housing and services for the homeless. While
that has been its core struggle, the People’s Movement also questions the privatization of the
public realm in the form of the state’s alignment with corporate capital, the expanding police
forces and the prison-industrial complex, and the production of ideological conditions that
promote responsibility only to the market. Within the People’s Movement there has always been
a strong political line for the community’s right to self-determination, demanding economic
development by and for those who lived there, mostly African Americans and Appalachians.
Led from 1973 to 1996 by buddy gray, the 1970s and 1980s witnessed the creation of several
institutions and local organizations, such as the Drop Inn Center, ReSTOC, the Over-theRhine Housing Network, and Peaslee Neighborhood Center, that assisted and organized the
city’s poorest community in housing, social service, education, arts, and culture. Even after
Gray was murdered in 1996, others held the movement and organizations together and though
the neighborhood’s population has declined from 16,000 in 1980 to about 5,000 today, the
movement continues to face down CBC, DCI, 3CDC, and city hall. The Freedom Center
As the millennium dawned, Cincinnati faced serious problems of police abuse of the African
American community. The Cincinnati Black United Front, then led by Rev. Damon Lynch III,
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and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit seeking to end police racial
profiling. In 2000, the court directed those two organizations and the Fraternal Order of Police
(FOP) to create a “Collaborative Agreement” to improve police policies and procedures.
But in 2001, the killing of Timothy Thomas, the fifteenth African American man killed by police
since 1995--a period in which no whites were killed--sparked an urban rebellion. The police
killing led to protests, demonstrations and marches. When police attempted to stop the protests
and keep them out of downtown, violence ensued. The mayor imposed a curfew, then created a
blue ribbon panel, and finally there were promises of more jobs for African American youth, all
accompanied by many prayerful meetings and much soul searching. African American leaders
such as Damon Lynch III organized repeated non-violent marches to demand an end to the
police violence. A new group calling itself “March for Justice” also organized two marches which
by Cincinnati standards drew large numbers in June 29001 and April 2002.
African American community leaders and progressive whites, many of whom had worked
together on the first March for Justice, then launched a boycott of Cincinnati’s downtown and
convention center, attempting to use economic pressure to force the corporate powers-that-be
and the politicians to end the racism and economic apartheid in Cincinnati. The gay and lesbian
groups of Cincinnati had already launched a similar boycott against the city’s ordinance which
forbade them to use civil rights legislation to protect themselves from discrimination in housing,
employment, and access to public facilities. The Coalition for a Just Cincinnati (CJC), which
began as a coalition of progressive white and African Americans, endorsed the goals of the gay
and lesbian groups, in part hoping for an even broader coalition which never truly coalesced,
largely because Stonewall, then the leading LGBT organization, rejected association with the
goals of the so-called “Black boycott.” While a few black preachers had courageously supported
an alliance between the two movements, other African American religious leaders also declined
to publicly support the LGBT civil rights boycott. The movement divided and declined.
The African American boycott activities continued for more than two years and then gradually
petered out. The Coalition for a Just Cincinnati fractured and some activists from it formed
Cincinnati Progressive Action (CPA). Other splinter groups such as “The First Coalition for a
Just Cincinnati” dwindled and no longer found media coverage. But at the height of what was,
for Cincinnati an unprecedented level of social organization and political activity in response to
the police killing and civil unrest, corporate Cincinnati and the politicians could not be moved to
make substantial changes in the city’s racial and economic policies.
In 2004 Corporate Cincinnati, led by Procter & Gamble and American Financial Group
(Lindner family) opened the $110 million National Underground Railroad Museum and
Freedom Center as a “museum of conscience” and a “beacon of freedom for all people.” Created
from above by the corporations working with academics and some community groups, the
Freedom Center was criticized by others in the African American community who criticized the
new museum. Some black Cincinnatians felt that corporate Cincinnati’s building of the museum
was hypocritical: they had created another riverfront development while ignoring poverty in
the neighborhoods. Some believed that the corporations interpreted freedom as equality of
opportunity in a competitive world without looking at what was really unequal opportunity
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producing quite unfair results. Still others felt that the African American experience had been
diminished by creating a museum which while dedicated to the Underground Railroad made that
only one of various experiences dealt with by the museum. (Lynch and Dutton, 2005)
When the museum opened in August of 2004, the Black United Front, Cincinnati Progressive
Action, and others created a one-day “People’s Underground Railroad Museum” on Fountain
Square in protest.
3CDC
Mayor Charlie Luken, elected in 1999 and reelected in 2001 as the city’s first strong mayor
in more than half a century, created a commission which in turn recommended the creation
of a new public-private partnership focused on downtown and inner-city development.
The Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) was founded in July 2003
with representation from major corporations and city government. The ideas was to put the
corporations in charge of city development. The Cincinnati Enquirer’s reporter wrote,
Many are looking to the corporate leaders who make up 3CDC’s brain trust (3CDC is
chaired by Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley) for solutions that ensure that regional
growth also means new business and residential development at the city’s downtown core.
(Ken Alltucker, “Groundwork laid, group looks to getting results,” Cincinnati Enquirer,
July 4, 2004, http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/07/04/biz_3CDC04.html)
The founding of 3CDC coincided with the closing of the City of Cincinnati’s Planning
Department and its functions were more or less taken over by the private, corporate development
group. (Osborne, 2003) Many viewed the closing of the department as a mistake. Robert E.
Manley observed in the Post:
The recommendation to abolish the planning department came from the City’s Economic
Development Task Force, chaired by George A. Schaefer, Jr., the chief executive officer
of Fifth Third Bank, and City Manager Valerie Lemmie. (Robert E. Manley, “The
Death of Urban Planning,” Cincinnati Post, Dec. 10, 2002, at: http://www.cincypost.
com/2002/12/10/manley121002.html )
Fifth Third bank and other corporations were in charge. With the Cincinnati’s Planning
Department abolished, citizens had no democratic control over the city’s future development.
Over the past few years 3CDC has taken the lead role in attempting to transform Overthe-Rhine into an area attractive to middle and upper income people, especially members of
the “creative class.” In doing so, 3CDC also put itself at odds with a number of community
organizations and social service centers in Over-the-Rhine as it moves to develop a community
that will serve new residents from the “creative class.” Tom Dutton and Robert Bell in an article
titled “Community Practice as Anti-Imperialist Ethic” described the conflict between 3CDC and
the local community in these terms:
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3-CDC’s plan for the Washington Park area abruptly overturns the recommendations of
three significant public planning processes that worked judiciously to determine the location of three public schools as well as recommendations of the Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan ( June 2002). Worse, the danger is quite real that the Drop Inn Center may
soon be in a war over its own land. Ever since the Urban Land Institute came to Overthe-Rhine in the summer of 1996 to conduct its charrette (Dutton 1999) the community
has known that “social service agencies in the Washington Park should be moved.” This is
ill-disguised code for the Drop Inn Center.
So far members of the Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement see 3-CDC as a domestic
imperialist operation that restricts the neighborhood’s right to self-determination by
controlling its territory, by chauvinistically assuming that the neighborhood can’t govern
itself, and by concentrating decision-making power in entities outside of the community.
(At: http://www.claimingpublicspace.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4)
The Jail Tax
During the early 2000s, Cincinnati’s dominant corporations, politicians, government officials, and
the police created a climate of fear of African Americans and other poor people in the inner city
and a sense of crisis that would lead the citizenry to give up its democratic control over planning
and turn the initiative over to others. The very real problems of drugs and violence in Overthe-Rhine were hyped up by the news media while the Cincinnati City Council and the Police
Department created Operation Vortex, the use of both Cincinnati Police and Hamilton County
Sheriff ’s office to carry out intensive policing in that community. Police and sheriffs’ deputies
increased patrols and arrests. Many African Americans and others in the community complained
that the Giuliani-style police repression was intended to drive them out of the neighborhood.
At about the same time, the Republican-dominated Hamilton County Board of Commissioners
proposed to expand the Hamilton County Jail by 800 beds, an expansion to be paid for by
a regressive sales tax combined with a decrease in property tax. The issue was opposed by
Cincinnati Progressive Action which created the No Jail Tax PAC to defeat the referendum in
November 2006. The Lindner family backed the jail tax proposal with hundreds of thousands of
dollars for publicity, but still it went down to defeat.
The following year, Democrats David Pepper and Todd Portune, now in control of the county
board, came back with another proposal for a jail expansion of 800 beds, albeit accompanied by
some proposals for social programs. Once again, Cincinnati Progressive Action and No Jail Tax
PAC opposed the plan, joined by the NAACP, the Green Party, and an anti-tax group first called
We Demand a Vote and later We Demand a Better Plan. Lindner once again contributed to
the pro-jail tax movement as did Pepper, but once again it went down to defeat, this time by the
coalition of social justice and anti-tax forces. (www.nojailtax.org)
The defeat of the jail tax proposals represented a significant victory for Cincinnati’s independent
voters. A majority of African American and white citizens had voted against the campaign of
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fear and the politics of criminal justice over social justice. They had shown that ordinary citizens
could stand up to corporate money and power and win.
Corporate Strategies
When we look back over this hundred year history of corporate domination of policies in
Cincinnati, we see that the elite have repeatedly returned to tried-and-true strategies. First,
corporations always put their position forward as if it were in the public interest. Second, they
work to weaken democratic institutions, always moving away from genuine popular control.
Third, where possible, they simply by-pass public institutions and create their own alliances or
create private-public partnerships that function as quasi-private institutions.
The corporations always work to foist off onto the public the cost of building infrastructure, of
renovating their buildings, or building new structures. Where such projects require large sums
of money, they shift the tax burden from the multimillion dollar corporations and the corporate
millionaires onto the backs of workers, consumers, and local residents. They prefer regressive
sales taxes to taxes on property, or to taxes on business transactions, property, or wealth, and their
intent is always to get the project of the rich paid for by the poor.
The history of 100 years of corporate domination, at the center of which has been the Procter
and Gamble Corporation, has meant the dismantling of democracy, the deterioration of
neighborhoods, and the decline of the city. Cincinnatians need to discuss this history and to plan
for a different future.
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Discussion
If the information presented in this study opens up a discussion about Cincinnati and its future,
it will have done its job. Clearly people with different experiences, values and ideas can come to
different conclusions about what this information means. I present below one point of view, the
conclusions that I draw from this study, as a contribution to what I hope will form part of such
broad discussion.
Corporate power dominates Cincinnati’s economy, society, culture and political life. A handful of
corporations wield power, controlling virtually every institution of significance in the city and the
region. The corporations control the political parties whether Republicans, Democrats or Charter.
Whether one looks at the workplace, the community, the art museum, the university, or the city
council, one finds the same relations of money and power. Everywhere corporations rule. Within
such a system, democracy and democratic institutions play an ever smaller role.
The corporate alliances—the CBC, DCI, and 3CDC—have taken over many of what were once
public powers. The corporate alliances—not the city, nor the county, nor the people—plan for
a future, and it is a future dominated by corporations. While neighborhoods have been starved
of economic resources, the corporations, their alliances, and their friends in government have
directed hundreds of millions of dollars into downtown and riverfront projects intended to
secure corporate investments and to generate profits. They envision an inner-city of the creative
class, that is, young professional consumers, without workers, without Appalachians or African
Americans, the middle-aged or elderly, and without the poor who now live there.
How have they been selling their vision of the city and its future? These corporations have used
the media to promote an ideology of economic conservatism, social irresponsibility, and political
reaction. Dominated by the corporations and this conservative ideology, most political leaders
of the Republicans, Democrats and Charter parties have argued for economic development for
business while neglecting the neighborhoods. Business, the politicians and the media have used
fear of crime (often a code word for fear and loathing of African Americans) to motivate their
constituencies to support these corporate programs.
Difficult but not Hopeless
The power of corporations is enormous, and yet the situation is not hopeless. When citizens
mobilize and use democratic institutions, and when they vote, they can challenge corporate
power and the corporate-controlled city hall.
• When Cincinnati’s citizens voted against David Pepper, the son of a Procter & Gamble
CEO, and for Mark Mallory in the last mayoral election, many were voting against
corporate control and for a larger voice for the people. Though others no doubt cast their
vote against the long history of white domination over what is now a half-black city.
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• It was also a victory for democracy and a vote against corporate control when Cincinnati’s
citizens in both 2006 and 2007 voted against the corporate-backed sales tax to build a
new and unnecessary larger jail.
• Similarly it was a step forward when Amos, an alliance of local religious congregations,
the NAACP, and the AFL-CIO pressured the powers-that-be to expand the Banks
Working Group—until then made up entirely of white businessmen—to include African
Americans, union representatives, and ordinary citizens. ( Kevin Osbore, “Secret Plans for
the Banks,” CityBeat, Jan. 9, 2008, at: http://citybeat.com/2007-04-11/news.shtml)
Building an Independent Movement
Today Cincinnati has many independent-minded voters who oppose corporate control of our
city. For example, there are African American voters who feel leery of the corporations, the
politicians and the white establishment, and who often vote for independent black candidates.
There are the gay and lesbian voters and their allies who organized to overturn the city legislation
that denied them the right to invoke civil rights protections against discrimination. There are the
progressive or “left-of-liberal” voters who for reasons of social justice twice organized to defeat
the imposition of a tax for an unnecessary and expanded county jail.
While the labor movement remains a captive of the corporate-controlled Democratic Party, many
working class voters have their own ideas and would welcome an independent and progressive
political alternative to the Democrats. Studies have shown women to be perhaps the most
independent-minded group in American society and they probably would support independent
politics with a kind of working class feminism that speaks to the needs of working women and
their families.
Unfortunately Cincinnati’s independent voters remained divided into separate sectors, each going
its own way without coordination or collaboration. How do we unite?
A Working Peoples’ Movement
What do we have in common? Most Cincinnatians, though we may call ourselves middle class,
are working people, whether we work in offices, factories, or on construction sites. Most of us
have modest incomes that allow us to support our families, but many of us live only a paycheck or
two away from economic disaster. If someone in our family is laid off, has an accident, or becomes
seriously ill, we could lose everything we have. We want, above all, greater economic security in
our lives.
For most of us, our greatest concerns are our jobs, our health care, paying for the education
of our children, and our retirement years. We would like to live in a city free of crime, racism,
discrimination, exclusion and economic apartheid that have characterized Cincinnati. We want
the war in Iraq ended and no future oil wars with Iran or Venezuela. Black and white, men and
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women, gay and straight, blue collar and white collar we should be able to come together around
a program that speaks to our common concerns as working people and the desire for peace and
social justice.
What are the constituents of such a local movement?
The African American Organizations – Under the leadership of Christopher Smitherman, the
NAACP has become a dynamic force in the fight for racial justice in Cincinnati. The NAACP
has launched an important campaign to defend the victims of racism and discrimination in
the criminal justice system. The NAACP also formed the most important part of the alliance
to defeat the jail tax. The Black United Front also continues to be active and some of its
members also opposed the jail tax. Black churches are very important organizations in the black
community and their congregations could play an important role in opposing corporate power.
Progressive Churches, Temples and Mosques – Progressive religious organizations of many
faiths have an important role to play in a fight against corporate power in Cincinnati. The
Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC) has for more than twenty years provided
leadership in struggles for social justice. The Amos Project has more than 40 congregations that
have developed a social agenda that deals with issues such as housing, transportation, health, and
education. Amos has joined with other organizations such as the NAACP and the AFL-CIO to
pressure for citizen involvement in the Banks Project.
Community-Based Organizations – The Over-the-Rhine Peoples Movement, a group of
local institutions that came out of fights against gentrification in the 1970s and 1980s, remains
important in resisting corporate development plans that would remove and replace community
residents. Throughout Cincinnati local community councils and neighborhood groups become
involved in small-scale struggles over myriad issues that often result from corporate abuse
and government neglect. These groups too could become part of an important part of an anticorporate movement.
The Unions – Unions should be leading the fight against corporate power and for the
empowerment of ordinary people in this city. But by and large, locally and nationally, the labor
unions have been content to be very junior partners in the Democratic Party. While the great
corporations and the wealthy dominate the Democratic Party’s leadership councils, labor unions
contribute huge amounts of money and often provide most of the campaign workers, phone
banks and canvassers to get out the vote. Once elected, the Democrats largely ignore unions and
the workers. Locally the Democratic Party of Hamilton County is hardly more democratic or
progressive than the Republicans as demonstrated by the Democratic-Republican deal to control
the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners. (Kevin Osborne, “We Don’t Need No Stinking
Election,” CityBeat, Jan. 10, 2008 at: http://citybeat.com/2008-01-09/porkopolis.shtml)
There are, however, possibilities for change. Cincinnati’s labor movement has seen some new
life. The new leadership in the Cincinnati Federation of Labor has a more democratic and open
style. The SEIU Justice for Janitors Campaign won an important victory with its new contract
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for janitors. The UFCW mobilized thousands of its members to win a better contract from
Kroger in 2007. UNITE-HERE is active in organizing campaigns in the region. Nationally and
locally, the Steelworkers and the Sierra Club have formed an alliance to jointly fight for jobs
and the environment: the Blue-Green Alliance. All of these developments represent important
developments for local labor, but still only a token of the kind of movement that is needed. Many
AFL-CIO unions, including those in the Building Trades, joined in a coalition for immigrant
rights and took a progressive position for comprehensive immigration reform including the
legalization of undocumented immigrants who living, working and raising families in the United
States. The Cincinnati Teachers Union has leadership committed to excellence in education and
other local teachers unions are concerned with reforming schools.
Immigrants - Cincinnati’s Latino immigrants have begun to organization in the Coalition for
the Rights and Dignity of Immigrants (CODEDI), a relatively new organization that works to
give voice immigrants to the region’s 60,000 immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and
other Latin American nations. LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, has
also recently become active in the area in defense of Latinos’ and immigrants’ rights. (See: Dan
La Botz, “The Emerging Latino Immigrant Community of Cincinnati, Southwest Ohio, and
Northern Kentucky” at:
www.ijpc-cincinnati.org/current_events_actions/emerging_immigration_labotz.pdf )
Immigrant organizations also exist among the area’s 20,000 or so African immigrants, usually
organized on the basis of nationality: the Mauritanians, Senegalese, and Malians. Middle Eastern
immigrant organizations also exist. We can expect more immigrant organization in the future.
Cincinnati’s immigrant communities are new and many immigrants are young. These immigrant
communities represent the future of social movements and politics in this city.
Constructing a Working Peoples Movement
The construction of a movement of working people in this city first requires more interaction and
more discussion between the various groups involved. The fact that most of us are working people
will not automatically overcome our differences. The long history of white racism toward African
Americans in particular will require us to really examine our collective experience. How can we
start to bring about greater cooperation and unity among working people?
• First, we need to create opportunities for African American, white, and the new
immigrant community activists to meet and talk about organizing a movement for social
change. Working together we get to know each other and overcome stereotypes. Through
mutually respectful discussions white, African American, and immigrants groups can
locate some of our common problems and common goals. When we find those common
issues, we should hold public forums with speakers from the various communities talking
together with the public about them.
• Second, we need to find opportunities for common struggle around common issues of
concern. Nothing does more good in overcoming differences than joining together in a
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common movement. When people walk together in a march, on a picketline, or go to
jail together to protest some injustice, they become welded together by that common
experience.
• Third, we need to look for opportunities to put forward common candidates of the local
social movements, and backed by the movements, independent political campaigns for
local office. We have to think about how we can create the appropriate political vehicle.
Perhaps it is an independent candidate endorse by the black community. Maybe it’s an
independent labor candidate. Or it could be a Green Party candidate. Or a Green-BlackLabor candidate. Most important is that we should run independent candidates not
controlled by the corporations, candidates who stand for a fight against corporate control.
If working together we can build a movement, then, in the future, we can consider running slates
of independent candidates for various city and county offices such as the city council, the county
commission, the school board, and judges. Such candidates would be activists who come out of
the movement and accountable to it, genuine representatives of our communities, workplaces, and
organizations.
A Program for Challenging Corporate Power
If we will challenge corporate power, then we must create a platform that speaks to working
people and the poor in our city. Every project we envision should be one that simultaneously
improves working people’s lives and strengthens the possibility of building social organization
while it regulates taxes and begins to dismantle the power of corporations over our economy
and our lives. We can’t develop such a program in this short paper. A progressive program for
Cincinnati’s working people will have to come from those people themselves. We can, however,
give some examples that speak to the kind of processes and thinking that could develop a
program that could unite working people into an anti-corporate movement.
Mass Transportation. We should contemplate publicly-owned projects that will improve
our communities and create jobs. For example, a publicly-owned institution such as a mass
transportation system of railroads, light rail, buses, trolleys and streetcars would provide years of
work for construction workers and later for the men and women who would run the system. A
mass transportation system should be financed by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy.
Corporations should also be taxed to run it so that it would bring their employees to work at a
low fare and offer free or reduced fares to students, senior citizens, and the unemployed. Unions
and workers should have a responsible role in running such a transportation system, as should
the consumers who use it. Such an initiative could be undertaken in collaboration with the
county and state governments by building an alliance with progressive forces in cities and towns
throughout the states.
Health Care for All. We should join with organizations such as Ohio’s Single-Payer Action
Network (SPAN) to push for a single-payer health system throughout the state. We have tens
of millions of uninsured people in the United States today and tens of thousands in our city and
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county. Our citizens should not have to live without access to health care. We should push for a
public health care system, eliminating the profit motive from an area of human life too important
to be based on the bottom line. Without private, profit-driven health corporations and insurance
companies, health care would be less bureaucratic, and less expensive. Once again, doctors, nurses,
and other health care workers should have a large role in running such a system together with the
families and the patients who use it.
Improving Education. Schools are still a key site in the struggle for civil rights. Cincinnati
parents have to join teachers in fighting to reform both the funding and the processes of
schooling to end the unequal distribution of resources, knowledge, and opportunities that
reinforce oppression and privilege. We need to demand that the Ohio Legislature distribute
funds fairly to state schools as ordered by the Supreme Court, and back teachers in supporting
the passage of school levies, reduction of class sizes. We also need to eliminate the unfunded
No Child Left Behind legislation. Teachers need to be able to return to the task of teaching our
children rather than being mere facilitators of tests that serve the testing industry more than
public education.
End Racism and Discrimination. We need to be part of a national movement to fight against
racism and discrimination of all kinds, whether against African Americans, Latinos, Asians,
Arabs, or Jews, or against women, the elderly, or gays and lesbians. If we are to unite our
communities, one of our first interests will be in understanding that we all have common interests
as working people and as local community members that are far greater than differences of sex,
race, color, language or religion.
End the War – Peace. We need to make any movement in our city part of a broader movement
for peace and social justice in our community, our country and the world. Cincinnatians should
be proud participants in a national movement to end the U.S. war in Iraq and to prevent other
such wars in the future. We could unite Cincinnatians around not only end the war in Iraq, but
also withdrawing all troops and closing all military bases in the region.
We should be under no illusions about what it will take to begin to open some space in
Cincinnati for independent social and political movements. As Frederick Douglass, the great
black abolitionist, once said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it
never will.” Our first task is to educate our fellow Cincinnatians about the corporate monopoly of
power in our city and to begin to organize the forces who can challenge that power.
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Studies
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Internet Links
Local NGO Links
The Amos Project
http://www.bellarminechapel.org/the_amos_project.htm
Cincinnati AFL-CIO Labor Council
http://www.cincinnatiaflcio.org/
Coalition for the Rights and Dignity of Immigrants
http://codedi.org/english/
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Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC)
http://www.floc.com/
Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC)
http://www.ijpc-cincinnati.org/
Miami University Center for Community Engagement
http://www.fna.muohio.edu/cce/engagements.html
NAACP Cincinnati Chapter
http://www.naacpcincinnati.org/
No Jail Tax Political Action Committee
http://www.NoJailTax.org
A Small Group: Restoring & Reconciling Cincinnati
http://www.asmallgroup.net/
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http://www.seiu3.org/
National Links
Multinational Monitor
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Who Rules America?
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/
Who Rules? An Internet Guide to Power Structure Research
http://www.uoregon.edu/~vburris/whorules/
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the members of Cincinnati Progressive Action (CPA) for the past four
years of thoughtful discussion of Cincinnati social and political issues and their fellowship in the
struggle to make this a more humane city. I also take this opportunity to thank for their helpful
comments and criticisms on the manuscript of this study Robin Alexander, Sherry Baron, Tom
Dutton, Steve Early, Greg Flannery, Rusty Gilbert, David Loy, Linda Newman, Bob Park, Daisy
Quarm, and Suhith Wickrema. While grateful for their help, I alone am responsible for the final
text of Who Rules Cincinnati? Thanks to Reed La Botz for formatting the final document.
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About the Author
Dan La Botz is a teacher, writer and activist who has lived in Cincinnati for twenty years. As
a Fulbright Scholar he earned a Ph.D. in U.S. History from the University of Cincinnati in
1998. During the last decade he taught U.S. and Latin American history at Northern Kentucky
University, the University of Cincinnati, and at Miami University.
La Botz is the author of several books on labor unions and politics in the United States, Mexico
and Indonesia. In 2005 Pearson Longman published his biography César Chávez and La Causa.
He is the editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis (MLNA), a monthly electronic report on
workers and unions in Mexico. (http://www.ueinternational.org/ ) His articles appear in Against
the Current, Counterpunch, Labor Notes, Multinational Monitor, New Labor Forum, New Politics
and other publications.
La Botz participated in the Coalition for a Humane Economy (CHE) in 2001and was one of
the organizers of the March for Justice to protest the police killing of Timothy Thomas that same
year. He was a founder of Cincinnati Progressive Action (CPA) and of the No Jail Tax PAC. He
has also worked with the Coalition for the Rights and Dignity of Immigrants (CODEDI). He
lives in the Clifton neighborhood of Cincinnati where he and his wife Sherry Baron have raised
two sons, Traven and Reed. Traven is now off at Cooper Union studying art. Another son, Jake
La Botz lives in California where he is a blues musician and actor.
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